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From The Times
June 13, 2008

Nature Notes: trees in the summer

Derwent May

The trees move steadily on into summer. The leaves on the lime trees are a darker green, and hanging among them there are now numerous little wings, with flowerbuds like drumsticks growing out of them. The buds will soon be opening into fragrant, greenish-white flowers, and the wings will play their part in autumn when they carry the seeds — again like drumsticks — down through the air. Sycamores are colourful with their bright red leaf-stalks. Their bunches of greenish-yellow flowers have now mostly given way to clusters of propeller-like seeds, which will spin down elegantly when they are ripe. On horse-chestnuts, the first conker shells are appearing, already leathery and spiky.

A grass that is very common on roadsides now is wall barley, which is like cultivated barley but with shorter bristles. Children like picking these prickly spikes and putting them up coat sleeves, when through friction they climb magically up to the shoulder.

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