68 
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
Willows to flower, and the gold (male) and silver (female) 
catkins are put out before the leaves. In the country, within 
a few miles of the larger cities, this can hardly be a desirable 
species to plant, for on the Sunday before Easter thousands 
who at no other period exhibit any strong religious tendency 
journey out to pick some “ Palm,” as they designate the Sallow 
bloom, and the rough pruning the Sallows then get must in 
many cases be disastrous. He who imagines that insect life is 
suspended until spring is on the verge of summer should visit 
the woods when the Sallow is in bloom ; he will be astonished 
at the swarms of bees and moths that are collecting the 
abundant pollen or sipping the nectar provided for them. 
Before the bright catkins can be seen the locality of the tree 
may be known by the loud hum produced by hundreds of pairs 
of wings. The all but invariable rule among the Willows — as 
among Oaks, Beech, Birch, Hazel, and Pines — is to depend 
upon the wind for the transfer of pollen from one tree to the 
stigmas of another of the same species, but in the Sallow we 
find a breaking away from what was doubtless the primitive 
arrangement in all flowering plants, by the bribing with honey 
of more reliable and less wasteful winged carriers. 
The Gray Sallow {Salix cinered) is really a sub-species of S. 
caprea. It has a liking for moister places than the type, or 
perhaps it would be more accurate to say that its growth in 
moister situations has brought about the differences by which 
it is separated from the parent form. These points are, briefly 
— the buds and twigs are downy, the leaves smaller and pro- 
portionately narrower, the upper surface downy, grey-green 
beneath ; the anthers of the male pale yellow, the capsule of the 
female smaller. 
The Eared Sallow (6'. aiiritd) is probably also only another 
form of S. caprea, distinguished by its small, bushlike propor- 
tions (two to four feet high), long branches and red twigs ; its 
small wrinkled leaves, which are usually less that two inches 
