Wild Flowers East of the Rockies 247 



WINTERGREEN; CHECKERBERRY (Gaultheria 

 procumbens). I doubt if there is a country boy or 

 girl within the range of this plant, and it extends 

 from Newfoundland to Manitoba and southwards to 

 the Gulf, who is hot perfectly familiar with it. In 

 Spring they search for "pippins," as they term the 

 tender, young, yellow-green leaves of the new shoots 

 that spring up on reddish stalks; the leaves have a 

 very palatable, spicy, flavor, when they first appear. 

 In Fall, children troop to the woods and gather the 

 bright, luscious checkerberries, competing with one 

 another to see who will find the plant with the large- 

 est number of berries; ordinarily there are but two 

 to a plant, but occasionally we may find five, six or 

 even eight of them hanging beneath the sheltering 

 leaves. 



The leaves are all clustered at the top of the rud- 

 dy stem that grows from 2 to 5 inches high; those of 

 adult plants are deep, shining green, ovate-pointed 

 and very sparingly toothed. Usually two white, tubu- 

 lar, 5-notched flowers hang on slender peduncles, 

 just beneath the spreading leaves, during July and 

 August. 



TRAILING ARBUTUS; MAYFLOWER (Epigaea 

 repens). Probably no flower, especially in New Eng- 

 land, is as eagerly sought nor as highly prized as the 

 early blooming Mayflower. In fact its haunts are 

 ravaged so thoroughly that one has to go farther from 

 the city limits each year in order to find them. Ar- 

 butus is a creeping plant; the stems are tough, hairy 

 and branched; they spread out along the ground for 

 6 to 15 inches from the root. The evergreen, alter- 

 nating leaves are tough, oval, slightly heart-shaped 

 at the base, net-veined and toothless. The flowers 

 are in terminal clusters, opening in April and May. 

 They are 5-parted, delicate pink and have a fragrance 

 similar to that of the Water Lily. Arbutus grows 

 throughout the eastern half of our continent on shady, 

 rocky hillsides. 



