s
very different from the English holly in leaf--grow all along the
Atlantic sea-board, from Maine to Florida, and are especially plenty
south of Maryland and Delaware. There is one superb specimen in Trenton,
New Jersey's capital, which is of the typical form, and when crowded
with scarlet berries it is an object of great beauty. One reason why
many of us have not seen holly growing in the wild is that it seems to
prefer the roughest and most inaccessible locations. Years ago I was
told that I might see plenty of holly growing freely in the Pennsylvania
county of my home. "But," my informant added, "you will need to wear
heavy leather trousers to get to it!" The nurserymen are removing this
difficulty by growing plants of all the hollies--American, Japanese,
English and Himalayan--so that they may easily be set in the home
grounds, with their handsome evergreen foliage and their berries of
red or black.

[Illustration: American holly tree at Trenton, N. J.]

One spring, the season and my opportunities combined to provide a most
pleasing feast of color in the tree quest. It was afforded by the
juxtaposition at Conewago of the bloom-time of the deep pink red-bud,
miscalled "Judas tree," and the large white dogwood,--both set against
the deep, almost black green of the American cedar, or juniper. These
two small trees, the red-bud and the dogwood, are of the class of
admirable American natives that are notable rather for beauty and
brightness of bloom than for tree form or size.

The common dogwood--_Cornus florida_ of the botany--appears in bloom
insidiously, one might say; for the so-called flowers open slowly, and
they are green in color, and easily mistaken for leaves, after they have
attained considerable size. Gradually the green pales to purest white,
and the four broad bracts, with the peculiar little pucker at the end of
each, swell out from the real flowers, which look like stamens, to a
diameter of often four inches. With these flowers clustered thickly on
the usually flat, straight branches, the effect against the green or
brown of near-by trees is startling. The dogwood's horizontal branching
habit makes every scrap of its lovely white blooms effective to the
beholder on the ground below, but far more striking if one may see it
from above, as looking down a hillside.

Though the dogwood blooms before its leaves are put forth, the foliage
sometimes catches up with the flowers; and this foliage is itself a