White and Greenish 



Moss-like, very narrow, pointed, seated on stem, and over- 

 lapping like scales, on upper part of branches. 



Preferred Habitat— -Dry sandy soil ; pine barrens. 



Flowering Season — March — May. 



Distribution — New Jersey, south to North Carolina. 



Curiously enough, this creeping, tufted, mat-like little plant is 

 botanically known as a shrub, yet it is lower than many mosses, 

 and would seem to the untrained eye to be certainly of their kin. 

 In earliest spring, when Lenten penitents, jaded with the winter's 

 frivolities in the large cities, seek the salubrious pine lands of 

 southern New Jersey and beyond, they are amazed and delighted 

 to find the abundant little evergreen mounds of pyxie already 

 starred with blossoms. The dense mossy cushions, plentifully 

 sprinkled with pink buds and white flowers, are so beautiful, one 

 cannot resist taking a few tuffets home to naturalize in the rock 

 garden. Planted in a mixture of clear sand and leaf-mould, with 

 exposure to the morning sun, pyxie will smile up at us from un- 

 der our very windows, spring after spring, with increased charms ; 

 whereas the arbutus, that untamable wildling, carried home from 

 the pine-woods at the same time, soon sulks itself to death. 



Star-flower; Chickweed-Wintergreen ; Star 

 Anemone 



{Trientalis Americana) Primrose family 



Flowers — White, solitary, or a few rising on slender, wiry foot- 

 stalks above a whorl of leaves. Calyx of 5 to 9 (usually 7) 

 narrow sepals. Corolla wheel-shaped, Yz in. across or less, 

 deeply cut into (usually) 7 tapering, spreading, petal-like seg- 

 ments. Stem: A long horizontal rootstock, sending up 

 smooth stem-like branches 3 to 9 in. high, usually with a scale 

 or two below. ( Trientalis = one-third of a foot, the usual 

 height of a plant.) Leaves: 5 to 10, in a whorl at summit; 

 thin, tapering at both ends, of unequal size, 1 Y / 2 to 4 in. long. 



Preferred Habitat — Moist shade of woods and thickets. 



Flowering Season — May — June. 



Distribution — From Virginia and Illinois far north. 



Is any other blossom poised quite so airily above its whorl of 

 leaves as the delicate, frosty-white little star-flower? It is none 

 of the anemone kin, of course, in spite of one of its misleading folk- 

 names ; but only the wind-flower has a similar lightness and grace. 

 No nectar rewards the small bee and fly visitors; they get pollen 

 only. Those coming from older blossoms to a newly opened one 



