STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 



are sufficient, and may be removed when the milk has boiled. 

 This flavoring is harmless and pleasant and easily obtained. 

 The Choke-cherry never reaches to the dignity of a tree, 

 like the Wild Black and Wild Ked Cherry of the woods, 

 but forms a pretty flowery shrub of straggling growth. It 

 blossoms in June and ripens the fruit in August. In respect 

 >of both flower and fruit it is very ornamental, and may be 

 introduced with advantage to the shrubbery but so tempt- 

 ing are the ripe berries to the smaller fruit-loving birds that 

 it is soon stripped of its rich crimson load of pendent fruit. 

 The cedar or cherry-birds are sure to find out the bush and 

 visit it in flocks till they strip it entirely, leaving the ground 

 below strewed with the berries that have been shaken off; 

 possibly the ground-squirrels and field-mice thus come in for 

 a share of the spoils. 



PRICKLY ASH Xantlioxylum Americanum (Mill.). 



This is a handsome shrub with glossy pinnate leaves, the 

 valuable qualities of which are hardly sufficiently known 

 and appreciated by those who know it only for its orna- 

 mental appearance, when the crimson cases that envelop the 

 black shining seeds appear in clusters between the bright 

 green leaves. The leaflets are in five pairs, with one ter- 

 minal, from an inch to two inches in length, serrated at the 

 edges, pointed, of a lively bright green, very glossy on the 

 surface; the stem and branches straight, covered with whit- 

 ish-gray bark ; the branches set with stout woody prickles, 

 which also extend along the mid-rib on the underside of the 

 leaves. The flowers are yellowish-green, in close set clusters, 

 appearing before the leaves. The fruit is a round hard shin- 

 ing bead-like berry, on a little thready stalk, two in each pod, 

 at first a bronzed green, deepening to deep crimson when ripe, 



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