26 RIVERBY 



ing beside a mossy stone where the sunshine fell full 

 upon it, and have thought it one of the most beauti- 

 ful .of our wild flowers. Its two leaves stand up 

 like a fawn's ears, and this feature, with its re- 

 curved petals, gives it an alert, wide-awake look. 

 The white species I have never seen. I am told 

 they are very abundant on the mountains in Cali- 

 fornia. 



Another of our common wild flowers, which I 

 always look at with an interrogation-point in my 

 mind, is the wild ginger. Why should this plant 

 always hide its flower ? Its two fuzzy, heart-shaped 

 green leaves stand up very conspicuously amid the 

 rocks or mossy stones; but its one curious, brown, 

 bell-shaped flower is always hidden beneath the 

 moss or dry leaves, as if too modest to face the 

 light of the open woods. As a rule, the one thing 

 which a plant is anxious to show and to make 

 much of, and to flaunt before all the world, is its 

 flower. But the wild ginger reverses the rule, and 

 blooms in secret. Instead of turning upward to- 

 ward the light and air, it turns downward toward 

 the darkness and the silence. It has no corolla, 

 but what the botanists call a lurid or brown-purple 

 calyx, which is conspicuous like a corolla. Its root 

 leaves in the mouth a taste precisely like that of 

 ginger. 



This plant and the closed gentian are apparent 

 exceptions, in their manner of blooming, to the 

 general habit of the rest of our flowers. The closed 

 gentian does not hide its flower, but the corolla 



