All persons, however ignorant of trees in general, are familiar with the
common Alder. It abounds everywhere in wet places, skirting the banks of
small rivers, bordering the sides of old turnpike roads, where they pass
over wet grounds, filling up the basins of muddy canals, and covering
with its monotonous green foliage many an unsightly tract of land,
hiding and then revealing the glittering surface of sluggish stream and
lonely mere. The Alder is a homely shrub, employed by Nature merely for
the groundwork of her living pictures, for covering stagnant fens with
verdure in company with the water-flag and the bog-rush, and as a border
growth to the fenny forest, graduating its foliage by a pleasing slope
down to the verdure of the plain. The assemblages of Alder constitute
the plain embroidery of watercourses, and form the ground upon which
many a beautiful flowering shrub is represented and rendered more
interesting.
The Alder among shrubs takes the place which the grasses occupy among
herbs; having no beauty of its own, but contributing to set off to
advantage the beauty of other plants that flourish in the same ground.
Nature likewise employs the roots of this tree as a subterranean
network, to strengthen the banks of streams and defend them from the
force of torrents. The Alder in New England is seldom large enough to be
called a tree; it rarely stands alone, but almost invariably in clumps
or larger assemblages, the different individuals of the collection
forming each a single stem, almost without branches, making an outward
curve a few feet from the ground, and bending inwards toward their
summit.
The foliage of the Alder is homely, but not meagre, and its color is of
a very agreeable tone. It is indeed a very important feature of the
landscape in summer; but in autumn it remains unaffected by the general
tinting of the season, and retains its verdure till the leaves fall to
the ground. Nature seems to regard this tree as a plain and useful
servant, not to be decked with beautiful colors or grand proportions for
the admiration of the world. But, homely as it is, it bears flowers of
some beauty. These consist of a profusion of purplish aments containing
a mixture of gold, and hanging tremulously from their slender sprays.
The extreme length and flexibility of these clusters of flowers render
them exceedingly graceful, and permit them to be set in motion by the
slightest breeze. The buds are seen hanging from the branches all
winter, ready to burst into bloom when vivified by the first breath of
spring.