Part 30 (1/2)
Another denizen of swamps and low ground, next of kin to the trailing arbutus, is the LEATHERLEAF, or DWARF Ca.s.sANDRA (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 mult.i.tudes 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; Ca.s.siope, mother of Andromeda; Leucothoe; Andromeda herself; Pieris, a name sometimes applied to the Muses from their supposed abode at Pieria, Thessaly; and Ca.s.sandra, 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 proc.u.mbens) 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 cl.u.s.tered 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 (Mitch.e.l.la 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 cl.u.s.ters of round, berry-like fruit, an attainment the arbutus still struggles for, but cannot yet reach. b.u.mblebees are the flower's chief benefactors. Game fowl, especially grouse, but many other birds too, and various animals which are glad to add the cl.u.s.ters 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 m.u.f.fins 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 c.h.i.n.ks 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 circ.u.mstance 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 cl.u.s.ters of most delicious, sweet, dark-blue berries, covered with h.o.a.ry bloom in midsummer. The abundant resinous leaves on its slender gray branches are pale and h.o.a.ry beneath. The caterpillars of several species of sulphur b.u.t.terflies (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 Pennsylvanic.u.m), 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 quant.i.ties 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 h.o.a.ry, underneath.
CREEPING s...o...b..RRY (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 f.a.gged pedestrians. Both the pretty foliage and the fruit have the refres.h.i.+ng flavor of sweet birch.