A Window in Arcady 
Another showy tree in winter is the tulip poplar, from 
whose magnificent columnar trunk, straight-grained and 
soft, the Indians were wont to make their dugout canoes. 
The seed vessels are large cones, consisting of numerous 
long-winged seeds packed around a central axis. These 
seeds are scattered abroad by the winds of autumn and 
early winter, leaving the bare axis standing in a hollow 
bowl of yellowish brown scales, which the sun of a winter 
afternoon vivifies to a pale gold. A treeful of them is one 
of the pleasant sights of a country ramble at this season. 
Perhaps the most striking of our roadside trees in win¬ 
ter, however, is one which is covered with upright panicles 
of yellowish flower-buds, mingled with gaping seed pods 
shaped somewhat like English walnuts. Examine these 
buds and you will find them apparently encased in buck¬ 
skin, through which the frost has no power to penetrate, 
but which the springtime sun will cause speedily to fall 
away and reveal to the world a wealth of violet purple 
blossoms. This showy tree is the paulownia, a native of 
Japan, from which country it was introduced many years 
ago for the adornment of lawns and city streets, where 
it is still more often seen than in country fence rows. 
Its stately name perpetuates the memory of a Czar’s 
daughter, Anna Paulowna, child of the despotic Musco¬ 
vite, Paul the First. 
In winter our admiration of the familiar sumac bushes, 
whose foliage puts a special strain of brightness in the 
autumnal coloring of old fields and roadsides tangles, re¬ 
ceives a fresh impetus. Against the white background of 
the desolated earth they now stand out in decorative out- 
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