DECIDUOUS TREES. 
437 
THE HALESIA, SNOWDROP, OR SILVER-BELL TREE. 
Halesia tetraptera. 
Low-spreading trees, blossoming 
in April and May, with a profusion of 
pure white pendant flowers resembling 
those of the snowdrop. They are 
about five-eighths of an inch in length, 
and hang in clusters on the last year’s 
wood. 
Fig. 143 gives a good idea of the 
form and style of a tree of this species 
fifteen or twenty years old, and of the 
forms of the leaves, flowers, and seed 
capsules. The latter are shown one- 
fifth the natural size, and the leaves 
one-twelfth. During the autumn, or last part of the summer, the 
head is covered with the four-winged seeds or capsules that distin¬ 
guish the tree at that season. The leaves are about the size of 
those of the syringa, of a fine healthy color, without gloss, and, 
when the tree is thrifty and mature, mass well. There is a fine old 
specimen in the New York Central Park, near one of the walks to 
the Ramble, that is about fifteen feet high and more than thirty 
feet across the spread of its branches, which rest upon the ground. 
There is a large specimen on the grounds of Miss-Price, near 
Germantown, Pa., which, though badly shaded by other trees, has a 
trunk sixteen inches in diameter, top twenty-five feet high, and is 
fifty feet across the greatest extension of its branches! There are 
higher trees of this species in England, but none on record of so 
great diameter. 
The Two-winged Fruited Halesia or Snowdrop, H. diptera, 
is a smaller tree, with ,larger leaves and flowers, and less hardy 
than the preceding; otherwise closely resembles it. 
Fig. 143. 
