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Except the chestnuts, whose bloom can hardly be overlooked, the flowering of the trees is but little noticed; the elm is one of the earliest, and becomes ruddy it is as early as the catkins on the hazel; willow, aspen, oak, sycamore, ash, all have flower or catkin even the pine, whose fructification is very interesting.
The very hazel has a pleasant sound not a nut-tree hedge existed in the neighbourhood that we did not know and visit. We noted the progress of the bushes from the earliest spring, and the catkins to the perfect nut.
While I am innocent of either ability or intent to write botanically of the great oak family, I ought perhaps to transcribe the information that the flowers we see if we look just at the right time in the spring are known as "staminate catkins," which, being interpreted, means that there are also pistillate flowers, much less conspicuous, but exceedingly necessary if acorns are to result; and also the fact that the familiar "pussy-willow" of our acquaintance is the same form of bloom the catkin, or ament.
Meudon is smiling; Clamart breaks into song; the air in the valley of Chevreuse is heavy with violets; the willows shower their catkins on the banks of the Yvette; and farther yet, over yonder beneath the green domes of the forest of Fontainebleau, the deer prick their ears at the sound of the first riding-parties. Off with you!
Once more at home, I grew stronger both in body and mind: the spring-time did me good, although welling up within me all the time, so imperiously, so irresistibly, that I never entirely lost the pain, was the thought that never before had I failed to watch the first uncoilings of the fern-fronds beneath the dead leaves of the former year; the willow catkins, the fragrant arbutus, all the signs of inspiration from the earliest breaths of spring in the hedges and meadows and woods about Belfield.
The leaves are about 3 inches long, narrow, and produced in tufts along the branches. Unlike our native species, the Californian Wax Myrtle has no pleasant aroma to the leaves. M. CERIFERA. Common Candle-berry Myrtle. Canada, 1699. This is a neat little shrub, usually about 4 feet high, with oblong-lanceolate leaves, and inconspicuous catkins. M. GALE. Sweet Gale or Bog Myrtle.
"Here," said Miss Harson, "is a small branch from an oak tree containing the young leaves and the catkins, which come out together; for the oak belongs, like the willow and the maple, to the division of amentaceous plants." "Oh dear!" sighed Clara at the hard name. But Malcolm repeated: "Amentaceous ament. I know, Miss Harson: it's catkins"
Through the bars of my prison I can see the catkins thick and sallow-grey on the willows across the field, visible even at that distance; so great the change in a few days, the hand of spring grows firm and takes a strong grasp of the hedges.
There were grey catkins on the hazels, and the foxgloves drooped with the weight of their dappled bee-haunted cells. The chestnut had its spires of white stars, and the hawthorn its pallid moons of beauty. Yes: surely she would come if he could only find her! She would come with him to the fair forest, and all day long he would dance for her delight.
For it is not Nature lessons that come into his calculations but "the mere association of plants and children." So the birch tree is chosen, partly for its grace and beauty, but also because of its bark, for one can scribble on its papery surface; the hazel, because children delight in the catkins with their showers of golden dust, and the nut "hidden in its cap of frills and tucks."
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