268 Flora of the Olympics. [ZOE 
shoots to the height of a foot and varying in color from pure white 
to rose-pink or purplish-brown. A strange crew they are, these 
sun-despising, fungous-looking plants! Plainly do they show us 
that the forests, dark and shadowy even in the midst of a sunny 
day, render it necessary for them to live differently from the ma- 
jority of plants. The lack of sunlight and consequent absence of 
green coloring matter, or chlorophyll, show them to be, in char- 
acter, the ‘‘tramps” of the vegetable kingdom. They must either 
steal the elaborated juices of other live plants, or depend upon the 
decaying matter of others which are dead. Then came two other 
delicate little orchids, the two tway-blades, almost always found the 
one in the company of the other. These are the greater tway- 
blade ( Listera convallarioides ), and the lesser (L. cordata ). 
Suddenly the firs gave place to a rich maple-bottom and more 
open hillside, and there appeared the wild ginger (Asarum cauda- 
tum); the strange Saxifragaceous plant ( 7olmiea Menziesii), one 
of those peculiar plants that disclosetheir seeds through the opened 
pod long before they are ripe; another of the same family whose 
fringed petals are as delicate as, and similar to, the crossed lines in 
a spider’s web, namely the leafy mitre-wort (MJtella caulescens); 
the beautiful palm-tree moss ( Muium Menziesii), one of the finest 
on the coast, and more like a delicate little tree than a moss. Upon 
the moist bank grew the Virginia waterleaf ( flydrophyllum Virgi- 
nicum ), its flowers sometimes a pale lavender, sometimes a whit- 
ish-green; and with it the pretty squirrel-corn ( Dicentra formosa ), 
whose flowers closely resemble both in form and color the ‘“bleed-. 
ing-heart,’’ to which it is related. 
Plunging immediately into the densest timber I had yet met 
on this trip, the ground of the fairly gloomy forest, which would 
have been dark and dismal in the extreme, was suddenly lit up as 
if I had come out into the open sunlight, or like stars in an other- 
wise black heavens, by acre upon acre of the snowy Canada dog-wood — 
( Cornus Canadensis), andthe fairest flower of the higher forests 
( Clintonia uniflora). This pure, Liliaceous plant, with its snowy or 
creamy flowers, delicate scent, glossy soft leaves in twos or threes 
from the root, and later its dark blue fruit is a favorite with every 
one, and I have yet to find the person, no matter how much or how 
little he valued botany as a science, who has not asked me the 
name of this pretty, and in English, nameless flower. > | 
