404 THE DIAPENSIA FAMILY. 



sepals. Corolla : with five petals on the receptacle ; wavy on their edges. 

 Stajiiens : ten ; the five petaloid and sterile ones smaller than those that are anther- 

 bearing and fertile. Pistil: one. Leaves: from the base with long petioles ; or- 

 bicular ; serrate, or crenate; thin; smooth, very shiny on the upper surface and 

 turning in the autumn to shades of copper and maroon. 



About the sprightly form of shortia there clings a strange story. It is 

 the plant that has interested great men who searched for it until its haunts 

 were revealed and its beauty universally acknowledged. It was the much 

 desired of Dr. Asa Gray, and is as indelibly associated with his memory as 

 is the Catawba rhododendron with that of Michaux. 



When Dr. Gray was in Paris in 1839 he observed in the herbarium of 

 the elder Michaux an unnamed specimen of a plant. The leaves and a 

 single fruit were all that was preserved of it, and its label stated simply that 

 it had been collected in " les hautes montagnes de Carolinie." Its power 

 to arouse Dr. Gray's curiosity was so great that on his return to America 

 he hunted assiduously for the plant in the mountains of North Carolina, but 

 wholly without success. In fact, in an account he gave after his return 

 from these mountains, he said : " We were likewise unsuccessful in our 

 search for a remarkable undescribed plant with the habit of pyrola and the 

 foliage of galax which was obtained by Michaux in the high mountains of 

 Carolina. The only specimen extant is among the Plantar incognitas of 

 the Michauxian herbarium, in fruit ; and we were anxious to obtain flower- 

 ing specimens that we might complete its history : as I have long wished to 

 dedicate the plant to Professor Short of Kentucky whose attainments and 

 eminent services in North American botany are well known and appreciated 

 both at home and abroad." 



Two years after this, however. Dr. Gray ventured to describe the plant 

 and dedicated it, as he had wished, to Dr. C. W. Short. In this way it re- 

 ceived its first public recognition. Henceforth no botanist ever visited the 

 region without searching for shortia. It was courted almost as faithfully as 

 was the philosopher's stone. In the meantime, Dr. Gray had found among 

 a collection of Japanese plants a specimen almost identical with the well- 

 remembered one of Michaux, a coincidence which strengthened his faith in 

 the existence of the American species. It was not, however, until 1877 that 

 it was found, and then quite accidentally, by G. M. Hyams, a boy who knew 

 little about the good luck that had befallen him. He had picked it up on 

 the banks of the Catawba river near the town of Marion in McDowell 

 county. North Carolina. Fortunately the father of this boy was a pro-fessed 

 herbalist and through a correspondent finally learned the true nature of the 

 plant. It had been collected when in flower. With its aid, therefore. Dr. 

 Gray was enabled to substantiate his original ideas of the genus and to per- 

 fect its description. But as for its natural habitat he still maintained that 



