320 BEAUTIES OF BBITISH TBEES. [March, 



The Arbutus reaches more truly the dimensions of a tree than most 

 other members of the order — which are mostly wiry mountain shrubs — 

 beinj:^, as it is sometimes, over ten feet in height, and as much as two 

 and a half feet in girth. Like many of the order, its leaves are 

 evergreen, but they are exceptional in their bright green colour — 

 a green with a considerable admixture of yellow, not of blue or 

 of brown — and in their width. They are ' obovate,' or reversedly 

 egg-shaped, with toothed edges, and about three inches long, growing 

 in upright tufts, their stalks being, as are also the young branches, 

 covered with short hairs and glands. Evergreens may be said to be 

 independent of seasons in the matter of flowering ; so, w^hilst the 

 Spurge Laurel' and the Butcher's Broom are among our earliest 

 blossoms, the Arbutus is among the latest, its creamy bells not 

 opening until September or October. Hanging in loose, pendulous 

 clusters, they resemble lilies of tiie valley, but are not quite so dead 

 a white. Unfortunately, the equinoctial season at which they appear 

 is not favourable to the retention of their pristine beauty unsullied 

 b}' wind and rain, and the tendency of the corolla to fall early is a 

 characteristic of the genus ; but some of them often remain, whilst 

 others have given place to fruit that may even have ripened to 

 its orange-scarlet maturity, so that we have leaf, flower, and fruit 

 together, as is so often the case in the plant from which the tree 

 takes its English name. 



Perhaps no order shows the variety and beauty of form in the 

 corolla as we have it in the pure colours of the Heath tribe. One is 

 simply horrified at the want of refinement in our botanical terminology 

 that can find no better names than 'tubular,' ' campanulate ' or 

 ' \irceolate,' tub-shaped ! Words cannot express the exquisite propor- 

 tions of the chalice-like flower of the Kalmia ; and the shape of that of 

 the Arbutus is almost equally unique in its beauty ; whilst, when the 

 observant eye discovers the secret of the contrivances within the cup, 

 the intellect is as charmed as are the senses by its exterior. AVithin 

 this tiny bell, not half an inch across, ten tiny stamens surround the 

 central column of the pistil. This is indeed a column, a honey- 

 secreting ' disk ' acting as plinth, the ovary completing the base, 

 while the broadened viscid stigma crowns the style as capital to the 

 pillar. The ten stamens spring from the base of the corolla-tube, 

 each consisting of short but stout filaments coated with hairs and 

 tapering towards the anther, the other and more unusually shaped 

 portion of the stamen. This consists of two parallel and united 

 ovoid bags, tapering at each end to a blunt point, each having near 

 one extremity a tail-lilce process projecting from it almost at a right 

 angle, whilst at the other end of the anther, Mhen immature, is a 

 single viscid, pointed appendage. At first the filaments bend out- 



