Minnesota Plant Life. 



309 



Tlie twentieth order includes the crowberry family ; the 

 sumacs, poison-oak and poison-ivy ; the false mermaids ; the 

 horse-chestnuts, maples, box-elders ; and the touch-me-nots, 

 together with the hollies, bittersweets, wahoos and bladdernuts, 

 besides some other families not represented in Minnesota. 



Crowberries. Crowberries are heath-like shrubs and re- 

 semble diminutive yews. Their branches are generally not 

 more than eight to twelve inches in length. Each branch 

 is covered with densely crowded leaves of an evergreen as- 

 pect and with the margins rolled over toward the under side. 

 The plants generally grow in tufts, forming large mats. The 

 crowberries are 

 rather rare in 

 Minnesota, but 

 are known to 

 occur on the 

 north shore of 

 Lake Superior 

 and in Aitkin 

 county an d 

 along the in- 

 t e r n a t i o n a 1 

 boundary. The 

 flowers are in- 

 co nspicuou s, 

 de\^ eloped 

 in the axils of 

 some of the 

 leaves toward 



the tips of the branchlets. The fruit is a black stone-fruit, less 

 than half an inch in diameter. This curious little shrub is 

 unlike any other in the state. It cannot be mistaken for a yew 

 because in that the fruits are scarlet. 



False mermaids. The false mermaids are odd little herbs 

 with pinnate leaves and deeply lobed fruits cleft into from two 

 to five nutlets. They are marsh plants and grow as slender, 

 more or less prostrate herbs, with solitary white flowers, trian- 

 gular in shape. No other plant in Minnesota resembles the 

 false mermaid. 



Fig. 150. Sumac bushes, with golden-rods in foreground and ma- 

 ples in background. After photograph by Williams. 



