378 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



This beautiful plant may be easily cultivated, and is much 

 improved by cultivation, the spikes being increased in length 

 and in the size of the flowers. It grows readily in any garden 

 soil, and may be propagated by layers or cuttings. 



There are several other species of clethra which might be in- 

 troduced, especially the acuminate, the pa?iicled, and the downy, 

 which would doubtless flourish, as they are natives of the higher 

 parts of the Southern States, and have been successfully culti- 

 vated in the open air in England. The first of these is a small 

 tree. They all continue in flower from July to October. 



XX. 6. THE GROUND LAUREL. EPIGAEW. L. 



Creeping, tufted, roughish, evergreen, American under-shrubs, 

 with alternate, entire leaves, and fragrant flowers in dense, ax- 

 illary and terminal racemes. The calyx is deeply five-parted, 

 with three bracts at the base ; the corolla salver-shaped, villous 

 within, with a five-parted, spreading border ; stamens ten, with 

 anthers opening inwards from top to bottom ; capsule five-celled, 

 many-seeded, encircled by the persistent calyx. There are two 

 species, one found on mountain tops, in the Antilles, the other 

 here. 



The May Flower. E. repens. L. 



Often from beneath the edge of a snow-bank are seen rising 

 the fragrant, pearly, white or rose-colored, crowded flowers of 

 this earliest harbinger of the spring. It abounds in the edges of 

 woods about Plymouth, as elsewhere, and must have been the 

 first flower to salute the storm-beaten crew of the May Flower 

 on the conclusion of their first terrible winter. Their descend- 

 ants have thence piously derived the name, although its bloom 

 is often passed before the coming in of the month of May. 



The trailing stem runs along for several feet just beneath the 

 covering of leaves on the surface of the ground, throwing out 

 from the sides or joints, at distances of two or three inches, 

 bunches of fibres or long fibrous roots, and ascending flower- 

 and leaf-bearing shoots, which usually enlarge upwards. The 

 extremities spread on the ground, brown, hairy and rough. The 



