Capitolo 85
inclement stains. Takes, for example, the willow and group of poplar. Anybody
it would deny that a weeping willow from a river English or a Lombardy
poplar in an Italian avenue, was as very of a true tree as an oak or a
chestnut. But as a covering toward the nude and it wind-swept mountain
heights a discoveries that the willows start to gradually to grow descending.
The 'layings the nets in willow' of the Alps and Pyrenees that the refuges same
under the protection of stones few sticking out, it reaches the height of only some
thumbs; while the 'grassy willow', common on all very tall
mountains in Western Europe, are a small creeping weed that anybody
ever takes for a tree of forest from origin to everybody, unless he happened
to see him/it in the stage catkin-that hands, when his/her true nature and history
it immediately would become apparent to him.
He/she anchors this small grass-as willow, one of the more northerner and game
of European plants, it is a true tree to heart anybody the less for everybody that.
Soft and juicy as it looks in branch and it puts the leaves, you can still count on
it sometimes as many rings of the annual growth as on a grandiose Scottish
fir-tree. But where? Because, underground. For he/she sees how astute it is, this
small shabby descendant of proud gentlemen of forest: hard-pressed from
nature, has learnt to make the best of his/her difficulty and precarious
position. It has a woody trunk to center as all the other trees; but this
I truncate it never appears above of the level of the ground: it creeping and roots
underground in tortuous zigzag among the steeples and pebbles that lie
strewn through his/her thin sheet of leaf-soil of highland. From this simple plan
the willow handles to find protection in winter on the same principle,
as when us human gardeners placed down the stems of grapevines: only the willow
rests placed down the whole year and always. But in the summer that it sends on
its grassy and brief branches, covered with the small green leaves,
and finally ending only in a catkin of silk. Still among the great one