OF VINES 



pea family come in October, but often the vine is overtaken by 

 the frost before it blooms. It has a delicate sweet perfume re- 

 minding one. as does the flower itself, of the ground-nut in our 

 wild garden. 



This latter is attractive, with its five to seven smooth egg-shaped 

 leaflets and its short, fat, dull, pinkish-brown blossoms in August. 

 It twines around the willow sapling and sprawls over the fragrant 

 sumac and admires its own reflection in the water at its feet. 

 They say it has edible tubers, but woe to any one of an investigating 

 turn of mind on our small woodlot! Here we found it. and here 

 we encouraged its ramblings, and it has responded freely to our 

 fostering care. Belonging to the same family the pulses 

 is the American vetch waving its restless collection of tendrils at the 

 end of the long leaf -stems; the lavender flowers form an agreeable 

 mass of color from May to August, while the veined leaves stay 

 green through October. We have also the Carolina vetch, and a 

 creamy white variety which, for some occult reason, is known 

 as a vetchling. 



The wild bean and the hog peanut keep the vetch company 

 through the late fall. They both have small lilac clusters of flowers, 

 and at first to our ignorant eyes their three leaflets resembled the 

 poison-ivy; but soon we learned that these thin bright leaves had 

 an excellent character of their own, and covered in most attractive 

 fashion bare ground where nothing else would grow. Who does 



not know the bitter-sweet with its orange capsules and scarlet 



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