PINK WINTERGREEN 



Pyrola asarifolia Michx. 

 HEATH FAMILY 



Our woods in early Spring lack many a delicate forest flower 

 that some of us knew and loved in the East. We do not have 

 the frequent April showers that bring forth May flowers. After 

 the first flush, heralding its advance, the floral pageant seems 

 sometimes to halt and mark time, waiting for the Summer rains. 

 Meanwhile, the days lengthen, until only a few hours of darkness 

 remain. Then comes the rain with its almost miraculous quicken- 

 ing of vegetable life. Verdure flows over the prairies, up the 

 hills, and into the woods, quickly followed by successive waves 

 of gay color. In the lighter aspen shade there are more flowers 

 than beneath the heavier foliage of the hardwood forest, and our 

 midsummer woods are adorned with many bright blossoms. 

 None is more ornamental than the Pink Wintergreen which grows 

 in great profusion in rich, damp woodlands and thickets throughout 

 our territory. 



In late June or early July, from the circle of thick, shining, 

 evergreen leaves, rises a slender stem, five to twelve inches high, 

 bearing numerous nodding flowers, each with a curved and 

 protruding style. The petals are softly shaded from pale pink 

 in the centre to deep rose on the edges. When a fragrance like that 

 of the cultivated lily-of-the-valley is combined with such beauty 

 of form and color it perfects a plant of rare loveliness. 



The large buds, from which the flower-stalks sprung, were 

 fully formed during the previous Summer. All parts were there 

 stem, calyx, corolla, stamens, pistil beautifully formed in 

 miniature, each separate flower-bud packed away beneath its 

 own scale, and the whole enclosed by a few larger red scales. 

 In this condition, with perhaps a light blanket of leaves, they 

 were exposed to zero weather before the snow came as addition* 

 protection. 



This careful preparation of parts in miniature, so beautifully 

 exhibited by the Pink Wintergreen, can be traced, in varying 

 degrees, in other plants, and, generally speaking, accounts for 

 the rapid development of vegetation when the quickening breath 

 of Spring begins to loosen the hold of Winter. 



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