380 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



The Chequer Berry. Partridge Berry. G. procumbens. L. 



Figured in Bigelow's Medical Botany, Plate 22. Audubon's Birds, with the 



Wood Wren, II, Plate 179. 



A delicate, fragrant, evergreen plant, growing in the deep 

 shade of other evergreens, throwing up from a creeping root a 

 tuft of three or four, sometimes seven or eight leaves, and nearly 

 as many flowers. Stem an inch or two high, dotted with white 

 dots, downy, with one or two linear, brown, abortive leaves 

 near the surface of the ground. 



Leaves elliptical or obovate, pointed at each extremity, or 

 sometimes rounded at the end with a delicate, reflected, mem- 

 branous border, and a few distant teeth or serratures ending 

 often in a bristle. They are of a leathery texture and of a pol- 

 ished dark green above, lighter below, supported by a short, 

 rather stout, often hairy petiole. 



Flowers of a pearly white, solitary, from the axil of the 

 leaves, on white or reddish, slender, hairy or downy footstalks, 

 one third or one half an inch long. Calyx double; the exterior 

 of two very short, broad, concave, pointed bracts, the interior 

 ending in five or six triangular teeth. Corolla monopetalous, 

 conical, broad at base, and gradually diminishing towards the 

 top, where it suddenly contracts and terminates in five or six 

 rounded teeth, nearly closing the orifice. Filaments very short, 

 white or pink, hairy without. Anthers as long as the filaments, 

 set upon their inner side, brown, large at base, divided half way 

 down, each division terminated with two pointed bristles or 

 awns. Style nearly as long as the corolla, uniform, surmount- 

 ing a five-sided, or rounded, greenish ovary, which rests on a 

 deep green disk with ten projecting teeth. The flower-stalks 

 bend down, so that the flowers and fruit hide themselves under 

 the leaves. 



Flowers in. May and also in the end of summer and in au- 

 tumn ; and the fruit is ripe in autumn and in spring. The berry 

 is of a bright scarlet, pleasant to the taste, but rather insipid. 

 It is often eaten in the spring when no other berry is to be 

 found. Its importance to the partridges and other birds who 



