AN UNDERGROUND FRUIT 



September ijjth 



N a former botanical chapter I called attention 

 to some common plants which have kept a 

 few secrets from most of us. And there is 

 still another which I forgot to mention, or 

 perhaps concluded to postpone to its more 

 appropriate season. We may see it now everywhere 

 in our walks, clambering over fence and shrub, and 

 lending its graceful foliage and drooping pinky-white 

 blossoms to many a homely weed which ought to be 

 glad enough for the borrowed adornment. Here is a 

 nook in the woods where the ground is screened be- 

 neath its delicate threefold leaves, while an ascending 

 spray has twined to the summit of a neighboring golden- 

 rod, perhaps, with long tendril -like tips reaching out for 

 new opportunities. 



It is the delicate "wild bean;" and if the threefold 

 leaf and long raceme of pale drooping blossoms do 

 not at once suggest the name, a little further search will 

 disclose the telltale cluster of flat pods, like tiny Limas 

 hanging among the leaves. 



But the botany, we find, has still another christening 



