The highly polished buds of the June berry or shad bush shine forth in evidence of a future of bewildering bloom that shall envelop its now dull branches in a robe of fairy whiteness when “the shad come down.” Break open the tightly sealed, varnished bud of the lilac tree, and out pours that incomparable fragrance of Spring, an odor that challenges all of the arts and sciences or alchemy to produce. One of the most notable trees in winter is the plane-tree or buttonwood, wrongly called sycamore, a term which can only be applied correctly to the Ficus sycamorus, or true sycamore, a tree closely allied to the fig, and a native of the far East. It is the ragged appearance of the buttonwood that makes it so conspicuous a tree in winter, the white trunk gleaming so distinctly through its shattered habiliments of bark. It is said that this disastrous state of its covering is due to the inelasticity of the bark, which does not expand to meet the requirements of the tree’s growth, as does the bark of other trees, hence the impoverished condition of its outer garment. But when we see this sad state of conditions repeated on its human prototype, we feel that we have more cause for sympathy than ridicule, so why not accord the tree the same commiseration? But I am sure there is some legendary tale extant to the effect that in mythological days the tree was a derelict from duty in some line or another, and for this was condemned to pass the rest of its days in a tattered coat, for so was sentenced the white Birch, who arrived late at an important wedding of the gods, hence doomed to wear her wedding garment of snowy bark throughout all ages in penance for her dilatoriness. But if the buttonwood wears the coat of poverty, it is more than abundantly supplied with buttons, which are so tightly sewed on that it is no easy task to secure a bunch of these drooping balls for decorative purposes, and for which they are so effective when hung among clusters of the scarlet berries of the bitter-sweet. Their secure hold on the parent stem has thus aroused the interest of John Burroughs: