lOG 



BULI^ETIN 145 



LEatiie;r leaf. Chamaedaphne calyculata (L.) Moench. 

 {Cassandra). 



This species is closely allied to the precedinj^: shrubs. It fa- 

 vorite habitat, also, is wet places and it is frequent in boggy 



meadows and swamp borders. It 

 grows two to four feet high and 

 spreads by suckers which enable 

 it to form large beds. The leaves 

 are evergreen, leathery in tex- 

 ture, cQvered on both sides, but 

 more densely below, with mi- 

 nute, roundish, scurvy scales. 

 Those of the upper surface are 

 whitish and appear to the naked 

 eye as tiny white specks ; on 

 the lower surface they are 

 brown and give this side a rusty 

 appearance. The egg-shaped 

 flowers appear in early spring, 

 hanging like rows of tiny 

 Leather-leaf. white bells from the under- 



In flower, X V^. sides of the younger twigs. 



It is one of the shrubs which make the swamps attractive to the 

 nature lover. 



TRAILING ARBUTUS. Bpigaea repens L. 

 Everyone knows the arbutus or mayflower. Emerson says 

 of its occurrence in Massachusetts, "Often from beneath the edge 

 of a snowbank are seen rising the fragrant, pearly-white or rose- 

 colored, crowded flowers of this earliest harbinger of spring. It 

 abounds in the edges of the woods about Plymouth, as elsewhere, 

 and must have been the first to salute the storm-beaten crew of 

 the Mayflower on the conclusion of their first terrible winter. 

 Their descendants have thence piously derived the name, al- 

 though its bloom is often found before the coming of the month 



