XXI 
ELM-TREE BOUQUETS 
I SN’T IT ODD that millions of people every spring 
pass by and beneath Nature’s biggest and most 
shapely bouquets and yet do not know of their existence! 
Those bouquets are the elm trees in bloom. They 
blossom in the very early spring before even the leaves 
appear on the trees. They even go so far as to litter the 
ground with certain tokens of their coming, and yet few 
people pay any attention. 
These bouquets start out to surpass all others in the 
very form the elm tree takes in its growth. It sends up 
from the ground a sturdy column that is the stem of the 
great vase the elm is to build. Fifteen or twenty feet 
from the ground this stem divides into half a dozen 
branches. These branches continue upward, flaring 
slowly. They form the body of the great vase that is to 
be. Far up toward the top of the tree these master limbs 
divide into innumerable branches, which spill in all di¬ 
rections just as the sprays might from a great bouquet. 
Anybody who looks at an elm in the winter cannot fail to 
be impressed with the vase and bouquet form which its 
bare limbs make when they are seen against the sky. 
On the elm in winter there are two classes of buds. 
One kind is round and fat. These are the flower buds. 
The other is long and slim. These are the leaf buds. 
When the woody scales begin to litter the pavements 
under the elms, it is time to begin to look upward. These 
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