nder how many
observers really notice any other willow "blossoms" than those of the
showy pussy? A superb spring day afield took me along a fascinatingly
crooked stream, the Conodoguinet, whose banks furnish a congenial and as
yet protected (because concealed from the flower-hunting vandal) home
for wild flowers innumerable and most beautiful, as well as trees that
have ripened into maturity. An earlier visit at the time the bluebells
were ringing out their silent message on the hillside, in exquisite
beauty, with the lavender phlox fairly carpeting the woods, gave a
glimpse of some promising willows on the other side of the stream.
Twilight and letters to sign--how hateful the desk and its work seem in
these days of springing life outside!--made a closer inspection
impossible then, but a golden Saturday afternoon found three of us, of
like ideals, hastening to this tree and plant paradise. A mass of soft
yellow drew us from the highway across a field carpeted thickly with
bluet or "quaker lady," to the edge of the stream, where a continuous
hum showed that the bees were also attracted. It was one splendid willow
in full bloom, and I could not and as yet cannot safely say whether it
is the crack willow or the white willow; but I can affirm of a certainty
that it was a delight to the eye, the mind and the nostrils. The extreme
fragility of the smaller twigs, which broke away from the larger limbs
at the lightest shake or jar, gave evidence of one of Nature's ways of
distributing plant life; for it seems that these twigs, as I have
previously said, part company with the parent tree most readily, float
away on the stream, and easily establish themselves on banks and bars,
where their tough, interlacing roots soon form an almost impregnable
barrier to the onslaught of the flood. Only a stone's throw away there
stood a great old black willow, with a sturdy trunk of ebon hue, crowned
with a mass of soft green leafage, lighter where the breeze lifted up
the under side to the sunlight. Many times, doubtless, the winds had
shorn and the sleet had rudely trimmed this old veteran, but there
remained full life and vigor, even more attractive than that of youth.

Most of the willows are shrubs rather than trees, and there are endless
variations, as I have before remarked. Further, the species belonging at
first in the Eastern Hemisphere have spread well over our own side of
the globe, so that it seems odd to regard the white willow a