Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers

Book excerpt: Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V GREEN LEAVES AT WORK Between the budding and the falling leaf, Stretch happy skies, With colors and sweet cries, Of mating birds in uplands and in glades. The world is rife.?7. B. Aldrich. When spring, long waited for, has come indeed, and young leaves are unfolding in May sunshine, we find the ground beneath the branches strewed with half-transparent green or brownish scales. In city parks they litter the asphalt walks, and drift along their edges into little heaps. They are bud-scales, whose day of usefulness is over. They have braved all the rigors of storm and frost, while, folded safe within them, lay the foliage of the coming summer, destined to expand in tender colors under happy skies. But the bud-scales seldom have any beauty, save the beauty of fitness. They and the sleeping life which they enfoldtogether constitute the winter bud. It contains very little water in its tissues, and so can withstand low temperatures without freezing. The bud-scales live in a chill and sombre world, and when the sky is blue and full of light they fall and perish in the heart of spring. Yet, they are themselves imperfectly-formed and partially-developed leaves. Under certain exceptional circumstances they have shown their possibilities, and developed into typical leaves. And under most circumstances there is in them the arrested power to become like the green foliage of summer. Stunted, as they are, these scales have done work which perfect leaves could never do. Their horny substance has shed the cold rains of winter, resisted the frost, and protected the tips and shoots in which the life of the branches lay dormant. We owe to the bud-scales most of the beauty of the summer world. Their highest usefulness has been attained through sacrifice of thei...