Part 26

Another little globe-trotter, so insignificant in size that one is apt to overlook it until its surprisingly large blossom appears in June or July, is the ONE-FLOWERED WINTERGREEN (Moneses uniflora), found in cool northern woods, especially about the roots of pines, in such yielding soil as will enable its long stem to run just below the surface. ONE-FLOWERED PYROLA, it is often called, although it belongs to a genus all its own. A boldly curved stalk, like a miniature Bo-peep crook, enables the solitary white or pink widely open flower to droop from the tip, thus protecting its precious contents from rain, and from crawling pilferers, to whom a pendent blossom is as inaccessible as a hanging bird's nest is to snakes. This five-petalled waxen flower, half an inch across or over, with its ten white, yellow-tipped stamens, and green, club-shaped pistil projecting from a conspicuous round ovary, never nods more than six inches above the ground, often at only half that height. When there is no longer need for the stalk to crook, that is to say, after the flower has begun to fruit, it gradually straightens itself out so that the little seed capsule, with the style and its five-lobed stigma still persistent, is held erect. The thin, rounded, finely notched leaves, measuring barely an inch in length, are clustered in whorls next the ground. Whether one comes upon colonies of this gregarious little plant, or upon a lonely straggler, the "single delight" (moneses), as Dr. Gray called the solitary flower, is one of the joys of a tramp through the summer woods.

INDIAN PIPE; ICE-PLANT; GHOST-FLOWER; CORPSE-PLANT (Monotropa uniflora) Indian-pipe family

Flowers - Solitary, smooth, waxy, white (rarely pink), oblong-bell shaped, nodding from the tip of a fleshy, white, scaly scape 4 to 10 in. tall. Calyx of 2 to 4 early-falling white sepals; 4 or 5 oblong, scale-like petals; 8 or 10 tawny, hairy stamens; a 5-celled, egg-shaped ovary, narrowed into the short, thick style. Leaves: None. Roots: A mass of brittle fibers, from which usually a cluster of several white scapes arises. Fruit: A 5-valved, many-seeded, erect capsule. Preferred Habitat - Heavily shaded, moist, rich woods, especially under oak and pine trees. Flowering Season - June-August. Distribution - Almost throughout temperate North America.

Colorless in every part, waxy, cold, and clammy, Indian pipes rise like a company of wraiths in the dim forest that suits them well. Ghoulish parasites, uncanny saprophytes, for their matted roots prey either on the juices of living plants or on the decaying matter of dead ones, how weirdly beautiful and decorative, they are! The strange plant grows also in Japan, and one can readily imagine how fascinated the native artists must be by its chaste charms.

Yet to one who can read the faces of flowers, as it were, it stands a branded sinner. Doubtless its ancestors were industrious, honest creatures, seeking their food in the soil, and digesting it with the help of leaves filled with good green matter (chlorophyll) on which virtuous vegetable life depends; but some ancestral knave elected to live by piracy, to drain the already digested food of its neighbors; so the Indian pipe gradually lost the use of parts for which it had need no longer, until we find it today without color and its leaves degenerated into mere scaly bracts. Nature has manifold ways of illustrating the parable of the ten pieces of money. Spiritual law is natural law: "From him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away." Among plants as among souls, there are all degrees of backsliders. The foxglove, which is guilty of only sly, petty larceny, wears not the equivalent of the striped suit and the shaved head; nor does the mistletoe, which steals crude food from the tree, but still digests it itself, and is therefore only a dingy yellowish green. Such plants, however, as the broomrape, pinesap, beechdrops, the Indian pipe, and the dodder - which marks the lowest stage of degradation of them all - appear among their race branded with the mark of crime as surely as was Cain.

No wonder this degenerate hangs its head; no wonder it grows black with shame on being picked, as if its wickedness were only just then discovered! To think that a plant related on one side to many of the loveliest flowers in Nature's garden- - the azaleas, laurels, rhododendrons, and the bonny heather - and on the other side to the modest but no less charming wintergreen tribe, should have fallen from grace to such a depth! Its scientific name, meaning a flower once turned, describes it during only a part of its career. When the minute, innumerable seeds begin to form, it proudly raises its head erect, as if conscious that it had performed the one righteous act of its life.

LABRADOR TEA (Ledum Groenlandicum; L. latifolium of Gray) Heath family

Flowers - White, 5-parted, 1/2 in. across or less, numerous, borne in terminal, umbellate clusters rising from scaly, sticky bud-bracts. Stem: A compact shrub 1 to 4 ft. high, resinous, the twigs woolly-hairy. Leaves: Alternate, thick, evergreen, oblong, obtuse, small, dull above, rusty-woolly beneath, the margins curled. Preferred Habitat - Swamps, bogs, wet mountain woods. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Greenland to Pennsylvania, west to Wisconsin.

Whoever has used the homeopathic lotion distilled from the leaves of Ledum palustre, a similar species found at the far North, knows the tea-like fragrance given forth by the leaves of this common shrub when crushed in a warm hand. But because the homeopathists claim that like is cured by like, are we to assume that these little bushes, both of which afford a soothing lotion, also irritate and poison? It may be; for they are next of kin to the azaleas, laurels, and rhododendrons, known to be injurious since Xenophon's day. At the end of May, when the Labrador tea is white with abundant flower clusters, one cannot but wonder why so desirable an acquisition is never seen in men's gardens here among its relatives. Over a hundred years ago the dense, compact little shrub was taken to England to adorn sunny bog gardens on fine estates. Doubtless the leaves have woolly mats underneath for the reason given in reference to the Steeple-bush.

WILD ROSEMARY; MARCH HOLY ROSE; WATER ANDROMEDA; MOORWORT (Andromeda Polifolia) Heath family

Flowers - White or pink-tinted, small, round, tubular, 5-toothed at the tip; drooping from curved footstalks in few-flowered terminal umbels. Calyx deeply 5-parted; 10 bearded stamens; style like a column. Stem: A sparingly branched, dwarf shrub, 6 in. to 3 ft. tall. Leaves: Linear to lance-shape, evergreen, dark and glossy above, with a prominent white bloom underneath, the margins curled. Preferred Habitat - Cool bogs, wet places. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Pennsylvania and Michigan, far northward.

Only a delightfully imaginative optimist like Linnaeus could feel the enthusiasm he expended on this dwarf shrub, with its little, white, heath-like flowers, which most of us consider rather insignificant, if the truth be told. But then the blossoms he found in Lapland must have been much pinker than any seen in American swamps, since they reminded him of "a fine female complexion."

"This plant is always fixed on some little turfy hillock in the midst of the swamps," he wrote, "just as Andromeda herself was chained to a rock in the sea, which bathed her feet as the fresh water does the roots of this plant.... As the distressed virgin cast down her blushing face through excessive affliction, so does this rosy-colored flower hang its head, growing paler and paler till it withers away." Under the old go-as-you-please method of applying scientific names, most of this shrub's relatives shared with it the name of the fair maid whom Perseus rescued from the dragons.

The beautiful, low-growing STAGGERBUSH (Pieris Mariana) has its small, cylindric, five-parted, white or pink-tinted flowers clustered at intervals along one side of the upright, nearly leafless, smooth, dark-dotted branches of the preceding year. When the glossy oval leaves, black dotted beneath, are freshly put forth in early summer - for the shrub is not strictly an evergreen, however late the old leaves may cling - it is said that stupid sheep and calves, which find them irresistibly attractive, stagger about from their poisonous effect just as they do after feeding on this shrub's relative the Lambkill (q.v.). In sandy soil from southern New England to Florida, rarely far inland, one finds the staggerbush in bloom from May to July. On the dry plains of Long Island, where it is common indeed, it appears a not unworthy relative of the FETTERBUSH (Pieris fioribunda), that exquisite little evergreen with quantities of small white urns drooping along its twigs, which nurserymen acquire from the mountains of our Southern States to adorn garden shrubbery at home and abroad. Mr. William Robinson, in his delightful book, "The English Flower Garden" (a book, by the way, that Rudyard Kipling reads as the Puritan read his Bible), counts this fetterbush among the "indispensables."

Much taller than the preceding dwarfs is the COMMON PRIVET ANDROMEDA found in swamps and low ground from New England to the Gulf and in the southwest (Xolisma ligustrina). Whoever has seen the privet almost universally grown in hedges is familiar with the general aspect of this much-branched shrub. Most farmers' boys know the Andromeda's mock May-apple, a hollow, stringy growth of insect origin, which they are not likely to confuse with the pulpy, juicy apple found on the closely related azaleas (q.v.). Abundant terminal spike-like or branched clusters of white, globular, four or five parted flowers in close array, attract quantities of bees from the end of May to early July, notwithstanding each individual flower measures barely an eighth of an inch across. We have seen the fine hair-triggers which other members of this same family, the beautiful pink laurels (q.v.), have set to be sprung by an incoming visitor. Now this Andromeda, and similarly several of its immediate kin, have a quite different, but equally effective, method of throwing pollen on its friends who come to call. When one of the little banded bees clings, as he must, to the tiny flower scarce half his size, thrusting his tongue obliquely through the globe's narrow opening to reach the nectar, suddenly a shower of pollen is inhospitably thrown upon him from within. In probing between the ring of anthers (that are pressed against the style by the S-shaped curvature of the filaments so as to retain the pollen), he needs must displace some of them and release the vitalizing dust through the large terminal pores in the anther-sacs. Is he discouraged by such rough treatment? Not at all. Off he flies to another Andromeda blossom, and leaves some of the dust with which he is powdered on the sticky stigma that impedes his entrance, before precipitating a fresh shower as he sips another reward. The straight column-like pistil, stigmatic on its tip only, allows the flower's own pollen to slide harmlessly down its sides. How exquisite are the most minute adjustments of floral mechanism! Is it possible for one to remain an agnostic after the evidences even the flowers show us of infinite wisdom and love?

Another denizen of swamps and low ground, next of kin to the trailing arbutus, is the LEATHERLEAF, or DWARF CASSANDRA (Chamaedaphne calyculata), a modest little shrub, its stiff, slender branches plentifully set with thick oblong leaves that grow gradually smaller the higher they go, and when young are densely covered with minute scurfy scales. Sometimes before the snow has melted in April, the leafy terminal shoots are hung with multitudes of little waxy-white, cylindric, typical heath flowers only about a quarter of an inch long, each nodding from a leaf axil, and the whole forming one-sided racemes. But as the shrub ranges from Newfoundland to Georgia, and westward to Illinois, British Columbia, and Alaska, some people find it blooming even in July. Mythological names were evidently in high favor among the botanists who labeled the genuses comprising the heath family: Phyllodoce, the sea-nymph; Cassiope, mother of Andromeda; Leucothoe; Andromeda herself; Pieris, a name sometimes applied to the Muses from their supposed abode at Pieria, Thessaly; and Cassandra, daughter of Priam, the prophetess who was shut up in a mad-house because she prophesied the ruin of Troy - these names are as familiar to the student of this group of shrubs today as they were to the devout Greeks in the brave days of old.

CREEPING WINTERGREEN; CHECKERBERRY; PARTRIDGE-BERRY; MOUNTAIN TEA; GROUND TEA; DEER, BOX, or SPICE BERRY (Gaultheria procumbens) Heath family

Flowers - White, small, usually solitary, nodding from a leaf axil. Corolla rounded bell-shape, 5-toothed; calyx 5-parted, persistent; 10 included stamens, their anther-sacs opening by a pore at the top. Stem: Creeping above or below ground, its branches 2 to 6 in. high. Leaves: Mostly clustered at top of branches; alternate, glossy, leathery, evergreen, much darker above than underneath, oval to oblong, very finely saw-edged; the entire plant aromatic. Fruit: Bright red, mealy, spicy, berry-like; ripe in October. Preferred Habitat - Cool woods, especially under evergreens. Flowering Season - June-September. Distribution - Newfoundland to Georgia, westward to Michigan and Manitoba.

However truly the poets may make us feel the spirit of Nature in their verse, can many be trusted when it comes to the letter of natural science? "Where camels arch their cool, dark boughs o'er beds of wintergreen," wrote Bryant; yet it is safe to say that nine colonies of this hardy little plant out of every ten he saw were under evergreen trees, not dogwoods. When the July sun melts the fragrance out of the pines high overhead, and the dim, cool forest aisles are more fragrant with commingled incense from a hundred natural censers than any stone cathedral's, the wintergreen's little waxy bells hang among the glossy leaves that form their aromatic carpet. On such a day, in such a resting place, how one thrills with the consciousness that it is good to be alive!

Omnivorous children who are addicted to birch-chewing, prefer these tender yellow-green leaves tinged with red, when newly put forth in June - "Youngsters" rural New Englanders call them then. In some sections a kind of tea is steeped from the leaves, which also furnish the old-fashioned embrocation, wintergreen oil. Late in the year the glossy bronze carpet of old leaves dotted over with vivid red "berries" invites much trampling by hungry birds and beasts, especially deer and bears, not to mention well-fed humans. Coveys of Bob Whites and packs of grouse will plunge beneath the snow for fare so delicious as this spicy, mealy fruit that hangs on the plant till spring, of course for the benefit of just such colonizing agents as they. Quite a different species, belonging to another family, bears the true Partridgeberry, albeit the wintergreen shares with it a number of popular names. In a strict sense neither of these plants produces a berry; for the fruit of the true partridge[berry] vine (Mitchella repens) is a double drupe, or stone bearer, each half containing four hard, seed-like nutlets; while the wintergreen's so called berry is merely the calyx grown thick, fleshy, and gaily colored - only a coating for the five-celled ovary that contains the minute seeds. Little baskets of wintergreen berries bring none too high prices in the fancy fruit and grocery shops when we calculate how many charming plants such unnatural use of them sacrifices.

Closely allied to the wintergreen is the RED BEARBERRY, KINNIKINIC, BEAR'S GRAPE, FOXBERRY or MEALBERRY, as it is variously called (Arctostaphylos-uva-ursi = bearberry). Trailing its spreading branches over sandy ground, rocky hillsides and steeps until it sometimes forms luxuriant mats, it closely resembles its cousin the arbutus in its manner of growth, and has been mistaken for it by at least one poet. But its tiny, rounded, urn-shaped flowers, which come in May and June, are white, not salver form and pink; the entire plant is not rusty-hairy; the dark little leathery evergreen leaves are spatulate, and, moreover, it bears small but abundant clusters of round, berry-like fruit, an attainment the arbutus still struggles for, but cannot yet reach. Bumblebees are the flower's chief benefactors. Game fowl, especially grouse, but many other birds too, and various animals which are glad to add the clusters of smooth red bearberries to their scanty winter menu, however insipid and dry they may be, have distributed the seed from Labrador across Arctic America to Alaska, southward to Pennsylvania, Illinois, Nebraska, and California. How plants do compel insects, birds, and beasts to work for them! The entire plant is astringent, and has been used in medicine; also by leather dressers.

BLACK or HIGH-BUSH HUCKLEBERRY; WHORTLEBERRY [now TALL HUCKLEBERRY] (Gaylussacia resinosa) Huckleberry family

Flowers - White and pink, pale or deep, small, cylindric, bell-shaped. 5-parted, borne in 1-sided racemes from the sides of the stiff, grayish branches. Stem: A shrub to 3 ft. high. Leaves: Alternate, oval to oblong, firm, entire edged, green on both sides, dotted underneath with resinous spots, especially when young. Fruit: A round, black, bloomless, sweet, berry-like drupe, containing 10 seed-like nutlets, in each of which is a solitary seed. Ripe, July-August. Preferred Habitat - Moist, sandy soil, thickets, open woods. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Newfoundland to Georgia, west to Manitoba and Kentucky.

This common huckleberry, oftener found in pies and muffins by the average observer than in its native thickets, unfortunately ripens in fly-time, when the squeamish boarder in the summer hotel does well to carefully scrutinize each mouthful. For the abundant fruit set on huckleberry bushes, as on so many others, we are indebted chiefly to the lesser bees, which, receiving the pollen jarred out from the terminal chinks in the anther-sacs on their undersides as they cling, transfer it to the protruding stigmas of the next blossom visited. After fertilization, when the now useless corolla falls, the ten-celled ovary is protected by the encircling calyx, that grows rapidly, swells, fills with juice, and takes on color until it and the ovary together become a so-called berry, whose seeds are dropped far and wide by birds and beasts. "The name huckleberry, which is applied indiscriminately to several species of Vaccinium and Gaylussacia," says Professor L. H. Bailey, "is evidently a corruption of whortleberry. Whortleberry is in turn a corruption of myrtleberry. In the Middle Ages, the true myrtleberry was largely used in cookery and medicine, but the European bilberry or Vaccinium so closely resembled it that the name was transferred to the latter plant, a circumstance commemorated by Linnaeus in the giving of the name Vaccinium Myrtillus to the bilberry. From the European whortleberry the name was transferred to the similar American plants."

A common little bushy shrub, not a true blueberry, found in moist woods, especially beside streams, from New England to the Gulf States, and westward to Ohio, is the BLUE TANGLE, TANGLEBERRY, or DANGLEBERRY [now TALL HUCKLEBERRY (G. frondosa). It bears a few tiny greenish-pink flowers dangling from pedicels in loose racemes, and corresponding clusters of most delicious, sweet, dark-blue berries, covered with hoary bloom in midsummer. The abundant resinous leaves on its slender gray branches are pale and hoary beneath. The caterpillars of several species of sulphur butterflies (Colias) feed on huckleberry leaves.

To a genus quite distinct from the huckleberries belong the true blueberries, however interchangeably these names are misused. Perhaps the first species to send its fruit to market in June and July is the DWARF, SUGAR, or LOW-BUSH BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum), sometimes six inches tall, never more than twenty inches. It prefers sandy or rocky soil from southern New Jersey far northward, and west to Illinois. Shortly after the small, bell-shaped, white or pink flowers, that grow in racemes on the ends or sides of the angular, green, warty branches of nearly all blueberry bushes, have been fertilized by bees, this species forms an especially sweet berry with a bloom on its blue surface. The alternate oblong leaves, smooth and green on both sides, are very finely and sharply saw-edged.

Another, and perhaps the commonest, as it is the finest, species, whose immature fruit is still green or red when the dwarf's is ripe, is the HIGH-BUSH, TALL, or SWAMP BLUEBERRY (V. corymbosum), found in low wet ground from Virginia westward to the Mississippi, and very far north. Only the bees and their kind concern themselves with the little cylindric, five-parted, nectar-bearing flowers. These appear with the oblong, entire leaves, paler below than above. But thousands of fruit sellers and housekeepers depend on the sweet blueberries (with a pleasant acid flavor) as a market staple. In July and August, even in early September, the berries arrive in the cities. One picker in New Jersey claims to have filled an entire crate with the fruit of a single bush.

The DEERBERRY, BUCKBERRY, or SQUAW HUCKLEBERRY (V. stainineum), common in dry woods and thickets from Maine and Minnesota to the Gulf States, puts forth quantities of small greenish-white, yellow, or purplish-green, open bell-shaped, five-cleft flowers, nodding from hair-like pedicels in graceful, leafy-bracted racemes. Both the tips of the stamens and the style protrude like a fringe. No creature, unless hard pressed by hunger, could relish the greenish or yellowish berries. This is a low-growing, spreading shrub, with firm oval or oblong tapering leaves, dull above, and pale, sometimes even hoary, underneath.

CREEPING SNOWBERRY (Chiogenes hispidula) Huckleberry family

Flowers - Very small, white, few, solitary, nodding on short, curved peduncles from the leaf axils. Calyx 2-bracted, 4-cleft; corolla a short 4-cleft bell; 8 short stamens, each anther sac opening by a slit to the middle; 1 pistil, the ovary 4-celled. Stem: Creeping along the ground, the slender, leafy, hairy branches 3 to 12 in. long. Leaves: Evergreen, alternate, 2-ranked, oval, very small, dark and glossy above, coated with stiff, rusty hairs underneath, the edges curled. Fruit: A snow-white, round or oval, mealy, aromatic berry; ripe August-September. Preferred Habitat - Cool bogs; low, moist, mossy woods. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - North Carolina and Michigan northward to the British Possessions.

Allied on the one hand to the cranberry, so often found with it in the cool northern peat bogs, and on the other to the delicious blueberries, this "snow-born" berry, which appears on no dining table, nevertheless furnishes many a good meal to hungry birds and fagged pedestrians. Both the pretty foliage and the fruit have the refreshing flavor of sweet birch.

PYXIE; FLOWERING MOSS; PINE-BARREN BEAUTY (Pyxidanthera barbulata) Diapensia family

Flowers - Abundant, white, or sometimes pink, about 1/4 in. across, 5-parted, solitary, seated at tips of branches. Stem: Prostrate, creeping, much branched, the main branches often 1 ft. long, very leafy, growing in mat-like patches. Leaves: Moss-like, very narrow, pointed, seated on stem, and overlapping like scales, on upper part of branches. Preferred Habitat - Dry sandy soil; pine barrens. Flowering Season - March-May. Distribution - New Jersey, south to North Carolina.