132 THE WINTERGREEN FAMILY. 



more rigid in their stems, as well as remarkable among Exogens for 

 the parallel veins of their leaves. 



Over 300 species of this truly beautiful family have been deter- 

 mined, all natives of the Indian Archipelago, Australia, or Polynesia, 

 where they abound as Ericas do at the Cape of Good Hope. In our 

 green-houses they almost rival the heaths, growing like them, upright, 

 shrubby, and two to four feet high, and himg with innumerable little 

 tubes or globular bells, usually pink or white. None surpass the old 

 Epacris grandlflora^ the first that was introduced, now fifty-five years 

 ago. Species of I/ysinema and Sprengelia likewise occur in good 

 collections. 



XXI.— THE WINTERGREEN FAMILY. PyroUceas. 



Very pretty little herbaceous plants, with large round flat leaves, 

 which are mostly radical, and grow in a rosette ; the stems solitary, 

 six to eight inches high, and bearing one or more elegantly bell- 

 shaped, drooping, pinkish-white pentamerous flowers, not unlike those 

 of a heath, as are also the anthers. They would be included in 

 the Heath Family were not their foliage and habit of growth so 

 widely different. About twenty species are known, natives pretty 

 generally of northern temperate latitudes. Five grow wild in Eng- 

 land, and two of them have been gathered near Manchester. 



1. Leaves roundish, petiolate, and crenate. Style long, straight,] 

 and protruding beyond the corolla. Petals and stamens \ „, 



, AViNTERGREEN. 



incurved / 



2. Leaves, petals, and stamens like the former, but the style] 

 ■ than the corolla, with a broad, five-lobed, spreading \ 

 stigma 



HABITATS AND LOCALITIES. 

 1. Common Winteugreen — {Pyrola media.) 



Formerly found at Seal-Bark, Greenfield, a romantic and rugged 

 place, full of caves, the scene of the celebrated adventure in 1847, 

 when Mr. Sidebottom and Mr. Wrigley, searching for the source of the 



