see it clearly
Weeping Willow Tree
Botanists would probably agree that, among flowering plants and trees, there is not a more puzzling group than the Willows. Though of comparatively recent introduction, there is no Willow so popular and familiar, from its exceptional form and beauty, as the Babylonian, or "Weeping" species (Salix babylonica). With the Poplars, the Willows form the Natural Order Salicaceae, a group, the smallest of which is entitled to the name of shrub, though within the arctic circle they sometimes do not exceed two or three inches in height.
The whole group are characterized by having their flowers in catkins, the "staminate," or male blossoms being on distinct trees from the "pistillate," or female ones. Among the difficulties of the study of Willows are the facts, that the male and female trees are often dissimilar, that in many species the flowers and the leaves are produced at different times of the year, and that hybrids (i.e. seedlings resulting from the fertilization of the pistil of one species by the pollen of another) frequently occur. The Willows differ from the Poplars in having generally narrower leaves, these being for the most part lance-shaped, with a finely-toothed margin, often pale-colored on their under surfaces, and furnished with the two small leaf-like appendages, known as "stipules," at their bases, though these often fall off early. The catkins of the Willows are made up of scales, or "bracts," fringed with hairs, but not notched like those of the Poplars; nor is there in the former group the least vestige of a "perianth." In the genus as a whole the number of stamens is variable; but in the Weeping Willow, as in many other species, there are two in the axil of each scale of the male, or "golden palm" catkin, which, however, is little known in this case.
Willows belong mainly to the arctic and north temperate zones, and the Weeping Willow proper seems to be a native of extra-tropical Asia, from Japan and China to Armenia and the banks of the Euphrates, and of Egypt and North Africa; but pendulous varieties of other species are also known in cultivation.
Though some kinds of Willow inhabit the barren tops of alpine mountains, or the equally barren plains of arctic latitudes, the Weeping Willow agrees with the majority of its genus in frequenting the water-side, or at least some situation where its roots can obtain a good supply of moisture. In such spots it may attain a height of forty or fifty feet in as many years, with a diameter of two or three feet.
The Weeping Willow belongs to the group known as Crack Willows, from the brittleness of their twigs at the joints. These belong to the section of the genus known as Vitisalix, characterized by producing their leaves and flowers simultaneously; by their flower-stalks bearing fully-developed leaves; by their catkin-scales being of a uniform, generally pale, color; by the filaments of their stamens being perfectly free from one another and hairy on the lower part, while the capsules are free from hairs; and by their leaves being "convolute"--i.e. rolled together in the bud, like a scroll of paper, with one free edge. Considering that we have between eighty and ninety distinct kinds of Willow in this country alone, the above apparently elaborate description of one of the three main divisions of the genus is not mere technical refinement.
The section Vitisalix contains three series, distinguished by having five, three, or two stamens respectively to each flower; and the last of these three series, to which, as has been implied, the Weeping Willow belongs, contains two minor groups, the Albae, or White Willows, and the Fragiles, or Crack Willows. The White Willows have minute stipules, "ovate-lanceolate" in form, capsules almost stalkless, and stigmas not only forked, but recurved. The Crack Willows, on the other hand, have good-sized "semi-cordate" stipules, stalked capsules, and merely forked stigmas. The several species in the last-mentioned group are distinguished from one another by the color of their young shoots and by the forms of their leaves. The young shoots of the Weeping Willow are pale green, very slender, and with a slight twist at the point of origin of each leaf, being, of course, also distinguished by their drooping habit of growth. The leaves are technically termed "lanceolate, acuminate," being some five inches long and only an inch across, tapering to a point, with a finely-serrated edge, smooth above, and with a grey bloom on their under surfaces. This species is also characterized by the ovate form of its ovary.
As to the scientific name Salix, we are told, in Thomas Newton's "Herball for the Bible" (1587), that--
"The Willow is called Salix, and hath his name a saliendo, for that it quicklie groweth up, and soon becommeth a tree. Herewith do they in some countres trim up their parlours and dining roomes in sommer, and sticke fresh greene leaves thereof about their beds for coolness."
Though this etymology "from leaping" may be doubtful, even with the analogous case of our own word "quick" applied to the Hawthorn, there can be little doubt that the old English name "Sallow" is a corruption from the Latin, whilst the other two names, Willow and Withy, both probably refer to the flexibility of the young branches.
Though the Weeping Willow is commonly planted in burial grounds both in China and in Turkey, its tearful symbolism has been mainly recognized in modern times, and among Christian peoples. As has been well said: "The Cypress was long considered as the appropriate ornament of the cemetery; but its gloomy shade among the tombs, and its thick, heavy foliage of the darkest green, inspire only depressing thoughts, and present death under its most appalling image, whilst the Weeping Willow, on the contrary, rather conveys a picture of the grief felt for the loss of the departed than of the darkness of the grave. Its light and elegant foliage flows like the disheveled hair and graceful drapery of a sculptured mourner over a sepulchral urn, and conveys those soothing, though melancholy reflections that made the poet write--
"'Tis better to have lov'd and lost,
Than never to have lov'd at all.'"
In the classical poets, we meet with only a few allusions to the Willow as growing by the water-side, and as twisted into baskets by the ancient Britons, the word `basket' itself being one of the few words which, under the form "bascauda," ancient Britain seems to have given to the Latin vocabulary; but from Elizabethan times it is invariably the symbol of forsaken love. This is remarkable, since, with one notable exception, all the Biblical references to this group of trees are associated with joyfulness and fertility. Yet for Spenser it is--
"The willow worne of forlorne paramoures;"
whilst in addition to the ballad fragment sung by Desdemona, the beautiful description of Ophelia's death, and various other allusions to the tree, Shakespeare, in the Merchant of Venice, represents Dido lamenting the loss of AEneas
"with a willow in her hand,
Upon the wild sea banks, and waved her love
To come again to Carthage."
It is difficult not to associate the Willow that
"grows ascaunt the brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,"
with the Babylonian species, which, however, Shakespeare certainly never saw; but so pathetic is the lament of the Jewish captives, that one can well believe it may have permanently altered the symbolism of the once joy-inspiring Willow. There is a pretty legend that its boughs first drooped under the weight of the harps, as the exiled Hebrews sang: "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered thee, O Sion! As for our harps, we hanged them up upon the willow-trees that are therein." The Arabian story-tellers, however, have a very different tale to tell. They relate that David, after he had married Bathsheba, was one day playing on his harp in his private chamber, when two angels appeared before him and convinced him of his sin. Thereupon he threw himself upon the ground, and lay forty days and forty nights weeping bitter tears of penitence; and in those forty days he wept as many tears as the whole human race have, or will, shed on account of their sins, from then until the Day of Judgment; so that two streams of tears flowed out into the garden, whence there sprang up two trees, the Weeping Willow and the Frankincense-tree, the boughs of the one drooping in grief, whilst the other constantly distils tears of sorrow.
The torches used at funerals by the ancients were made of Willow wood; and it may have been a tree of ill omen, seeing that the soothsayers of Babylon are said to have foretold the early death of Alexander the Great, from the fact that the boughs of a Weeping Willow swept the crown from his head as he was crossing the Euphrates in a boat.
This beautiful tree is said to have been introduced into Europe by Tournefort, and was almost certainly first brought to England, in 1748, by Mr. Vernon, a Turkey merchant of Aleppo, who planted a tree, from the Euphrates, at his seat at Twickenham Park. Its alleged introduction by the poet Pope is a poetical fiction, of which there are several versions. The poet, it is said, was with his friend Lady Suffolk, when she received a basket of figs from Turkey, or Spain, and noticing that some of the twigs of the basket seemed to have life in them, he exclaimed: "Perhaps these may produce something that we have not in England," and accordingly planted them in his garden.
As the greenish-yellow flowers that appear in May never produce seed in this species, and as almost all Willows can be readily propagated by slips, this is the way in which this tree is always multiplied, and in this way it was introduced by Governor Beatson into the island of St. Helena, where there are no native Willows. The form, however, planted over the tomb of Napoleon, from which many cuttings have now grown into large trees in England, seems to be a distinct variety, having reddish shoots and no stipules to the leaves.
Though perhaps its wood might be used, like other Willows, for crayon charcoal or for paper pulp, and its bark possesses some of the medicinal and tanning properties of the group, the Weeping Willow is practically a purely ornamental tree. As Gilpin says, it is "a perfect contrast to the Lombardy poplar. The light, airy spray of the poplar rises perpendicularly; that of the weeping willow is pendent. The shape of the leaf is conformable to the pensile character of the tree, and its spray, which is lighter than that of the poplar, is more easily put in motion by a breath of air. The weeping willow, however, is not adapted to sublime subjects. We wish it not to screen the broken buttresses and Gothic windows of an abbey, or to overshadow the battlements of a ruined castle. These offices it resigns to the oak, whose dignity can support them. The weeping willow seeks a humble scene--some romantic footpath bridge, some quiet grave, which it half conceals, or some glassy pond, over which it hangs its streaming foliage." In the words of Cowper, a poet who would be familiar with the newly-introduced species--
"the willows dip
Their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink."