Eyes and No Eyes

IN THE PARK because all maples have a great deal of very sugary juice or sap in them, which rises up and oozes out of the leaves, either from cracks made by the leaf being dry, or because some insect has bitten a hole. You must have seen the little green blight-insects which cling on rose trees and other plants, and suck out their juice. Sycamore twig with its fruit.

Hundreds and thousands of these, besides other bugs (such as the cuckoo-spit, which you find covered with froth), suck the sap of trees. So through the cracks they have made the sugary juice of the sycamore or the maple oozes out over the leaves.

The fruit of these trees is very curious. It is winged like the keys of the ash, but two fruits grow together, so that the two wings spread out like those of a moth. The wings of the Field Maple fruit are spread more widely than those of the sycamore.

Maple wood is very useful for furniture. A great many of our desks and wardrobes are made from American maple. Maple sugar, which American children love, comes from the sugary sap of an American species.

Another tree which you will find in the park is the Walnut, which was brought to England by the Romans. It is a large, spreading tree with a rough trunk and strong, crooked branches. Its leaves are cut like those of the ash, but they are 239