Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/91

 light green makes it a perfect complement to the red of the currant when flowering; and by not looking at all like an evergreen, which it really is, bewilders the beholder, who sees it growing luxuriantly all along the river-banks, as to the time of year.

Here is another elegant shrub that does its growing in the winter, and takes the long dry summer to ripen its fruit and be beautiful in,—the Berberis aquifolium, or holly-leaved barberry, commonly known as the Oregon grape. It is looking as fresh and piquant in March as though it had all of April and May behind it. All around us, on every hand, are plants and shrubs or trees growing. Behold these graceful little yew-trees, two feet high. They look as though they had come up in a day, so delicate and new they seem. Examine the ends of the fir-boughs, and question the crab-apple, the sallal, and the wild-cherry. Do you see that line of silver down under the riverbank? That is the glisten of the catkins on the willows (Salix scouleriana) that were out in February. It makes a pretty contrast to the red stems of a smaller species of willow which grows along the very margin of the river, with its roots in the water. I am not certain of the variety.

There certainly is no lack of interesting things in the woods of early spring in Oregon. To my eye, with such a variety of green and really growing trees and shrubs, it is a relief to take into the view a group of naked stems, like the straight and light boles of the aspen (Populus tremuloides), the gray trunks of the dogwood (Cornus nuttalis), or the rugged, scraggy forms of the water-loving ash (Fraxinus Oregona). Uniform as the climate is, and little as the dropping of the leaves -of deciduous trees affects the general aspect of the landscape, there is yet to the critical observer a sufficiently marked difference in seasons to make the study of spring and summer, and autumn and winter, as shown by the vegetation of fields and forests, profitable and compensatory.

It is true that one cannot come back from a walk at this time of year laden with armfuls of flowering shrubbery, as we may in six weeks from now. You cannot, with safety, stretch yourself on the earth and indulge in building Spanish castles, as in July weather it is pleasant to do, while birds sing among the