THE TRUMPET FLOWER FAMILY. 407 



C. hispidula. Gray. 



An evergreen plant, with a woody stem, creeping on the earth 

 or beneath the decayed leaves, within deep, shady woods, and 

 sending out numerous, prostrate, filiform branches, rough with 

 appressed, ferruginous bristles. The flowers are solitary, on 

 short, recurved stems, in the axil of a leaf, with two ovate, con- 

 cave, hispid bracts. Calyx of four pointed segments, surmount- 

 ing the ovary and forming a part of the succulent berry. Co- 

 rolla small, white, bell-shaped, somewhat four-sided. Berry 

 white, eatable, juicy, and of an agreeable subacid taste, with a 

 pleasant chequer -berry flavor. The whole plant has the aro- 

 matic taste and smell of Gaultheria procumbens. The leaves 

 are about one third of an inch long, nearly orbicular, acute at 

 the end, rounded or acute at base, reflexed at the margin, smooth 

 above, paler and scattered with stiff hairs beneath. 



Flowers in May and June. Mr. Tuckerman tells me that 

 this plant is abundant on the sides of the White Mountains, 

 where it forms, with its creeping stems, large, thin mats, beneath 

 which, when lifted up, the pleasant berries are found in luxu- 

 riant profusion. This plant evidently takes its place between 

 Oxycoccus and Gaultheria, the former of which it resembles in 

 habit, the latter in properties. 



The Trumpet Flower Family, Bignoniacece, a rather large 

 family of trees, climbing shrubs and herbaceous plants, with 

 large, trumpet-shaped, showy flowers, contains three genera, — 

 two Trumpet Flowers Bignbnia and Tecbma and the Catalpa, 

 which are somewhat extensively introduced as ornamental 

 plants, but are not found growing naturally in this State, nor 

 probably in any part of New England. 



position of a plant, which, ever since its first detection, has been wandering from 

 genus to genus, suing in vain for admittance at the gates of four old genera and 

 two new ones, and at last obtaining, from his faithful examination of its case, a 

 character, a habitation and a home, in a seventh. 



