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WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND BLOSSOMS

are large and rough, heart-shaped, and very plentiful, so that the tree affords good shade. The flowers are small and inconspicuous, of a greenish-white colour, the sexes separate, though sometimes on the same tree. The male or staminate flowers consist of a four-leaved perianth, enclosing four stamens, a large number of the blossoms being combined in a catkin-like spike, depending from the axils of the leaves. The female spike is shorter, and the individual flower consists of a four-parted perianth, enclosing the ovary and its two-branched stigma. After fertilization the perianth becomes plump and succulent, and all on the one spike become so pressed together by their great increase in size that they form a multiple fruit, having a slight resemblance to the fruit of the Bramble (the produce of one flower), but really differing from it greatly. Mulberries are ripe in August or September.

The leaves do not unfold from the bud until the cold weather is well over, usually in May. It is said that its Latin name Morus is derived from mora, delay, in consequence of this caution on the part of the tree. The leaves generally used in the silk-culture for feeding the "worms" are those of the White Mulberry (Morus alba).


The Small-leaved Elm (Ulmus campestris).


The Elm is one of our commonest trees, yet a great amount of uncertainty appears to prevail in the popular mind in identifying the Common or Small-leaved from our second British species, the variously-named Scotch Elm, Wych Elm, Witch Hazel, or Mountain Elm (Ulmus montana). There is something more than a suspicion that campestris is not strictly indigenous, but it settled in the country so many hundreds of years ago (brought hither, some say, by returning Crusaders) that it would appear ungenerous at this date to question its claims to be called British, especially as it is more widely