Page:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.djvu/286

140 produced such picturesque monsters as those at Burnham, the Beech-trunk grows clean and straight to a great height, sending off slender, more or less downward-bending, branches with shiny red skins. The twigs bear long, slender, fine-pointed brown buds that are closely mimicked by the snail Clausilia laminata, that loves to haunt the mossy angles between its large spreading roots, and to climb at even up its trunk, which from its smoothness and grey colour is far more suggestive of the gothic column than is the ruddy pine-stern. In spring these buds expand and drop off as the rising sap swells the rolled-up leaves within, which emerge bright silky things, plaited, and edged with the most delicate fringe of gossamer, that gleams in the April sunshine. Then the Beech is indeed a thing of beauty, fair and majestic. The Birch has well been styled by Coleridge "The Lady of the Woods," but the Beech is surely entitled to take higher rank as the Queen of the Forest, especially in the spring, when covered with this bright and tender foliage, amidst which the flowers are lost.

As summer comes the silken fringe of the leaves is cast off as they become firmer in texture, thicker, and more opaque of tint; yet smooth, and with a character peculiarly their own. With the advent of autumn the leaves become crisp, and turn to red-gold, or crimson, or warm ruddy brown. Then, when the afternoon sunbeams fall upon the Beech-wood, it seems all on fire, and the autumnal glories of every other tree are eclipsed.

In April or May the Beech flowers. The blossoms are of two kinds, male and female, produced on stalks from the axils. The male flowers are combined in threes or fours within an involucre, forming a silky tassel as it hangs downwards with its yellow anthers waving. The individual flower has a bell-shaped, five or six-lobed perianth, with a varying number of stamens. Nearer the growing end of the twig rise the female flowers on shorter stalks. They are usually two or four together, in a silky-haired, four-parted involucre, known as a