PINK 



the red man. All who have found it in its secluded haunts will 

 sympathize with Mr. Higginson's feeling that each specimen is a 

 rarity, even though he should find a hundred to an acre. Gray 

 assigns it to " dry or moist woods," while Mr. Baldwin writes : 

 '* The finest specimens I ever saw sprang out of cushions of crisp 

 reindeer moss high up among the rocks of an exposed hill-side, 

 and again I have found it growing vigorously in almost open 

 swamps, but nearly colorless from excessive moisture." The 

 same writer quotes a lady who is familiar with it in the Adiron- 

 dacks. She says : ''It seems to have a great fondness for decay- 

 ing wood, and I often see a whole row perched like birds along 

 a crumbling log;" while I recall a mountain lake where the 

 steep cliffs rise from the water's edge; here and there, on a tiny 

 shelf strewn with pine-needles, can be seen a pair of large veiny 

 leaves, above which, in early June, the pink balloon-like blos- 

 som floats from its slender scape. 



PALE CORYDALIS. 



[PI. xci 



Corydalis glauca. Fumitory Family. 



Stem. — Six inches to two feet high. Leaves. — Pale; divided into deli- 

 cate leaflets. Flozvers. — Pink and yellow ; in loose clusters. Calyx. — Of 

 two small, scale-like sepals. Corolla. — Pink, tipped with yellow; closed 

 and flattened, of four petals, with a short spur at the base of the upper petal. 

 Stamens. — Six ; maturing before the pistil, thus avoiding self-fertilization. 

 Pistil. — One. 



From rocky clefts in the early summer woods springs the 

 pale corydalis, its graceful fohage dim with a whitish bloom, and 

 its delicate, rosy, yellow-tipped flowers betraying, by their odd, 

 flat corollas, their kinship with the Dutchman's breeches and 

 squirrel corn of the early year, as well as with the bleeding hearts 

 of the garden. Thoreau assigns them to the middle of May, and 

 says they are ''rarely met with," which statement does not coin- 

 cide with the experience of those who find the rocky woodlands 

 each summer abundantly decorated with their fragile clusters. 



The generic name, Corydalis, is the ancient Greek title for 



205 



