]
The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in
bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock
Spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue
flowers, each on a slender stem.
Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed,
this tree is singularly graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit
upon exposed ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets,
huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages to
throw out its sprays in irrepressible loveliness; while on well-ground
moraine soil it develops a perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage and
fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in the forest; poised in thin
white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not in the
faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming majesty,
drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race,
loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and joyously
receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive
tentacles, feeling the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine
conifers so finely veils its strength.
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