White and Greenish 



it with the help of leaves filled with good green matter (chloro- 

 phyll) on which virtuous vegetable life depends; but some an- 

 cestral knave elected to live by piracy, to drain the already di- 

 gested food of its neighbors ; so the Indian pipe gradually lost the 

 use of parts for which it had need no longer, until we find it to-day 

 without color and its leaves degenerated into mere scaly bracts. 

 Nature has manifold ways of illustrating the parable of the ten 

 pieces of money. Spiritual law is natural law: " From him that 

 hath not, even that he hath shall betaken away." Among plants 

 as among souls, there are all degrees of backsliders. The fox- 

 glove, which is guilty of only sly, petty larceny, wears not the 

 equivalent of the striped suit and the shaved head; nor does the 

 mistletoe, which steals crude food from the tree, but still digests it 

 itself, and is therefore only a dingy yellowish green. Such plants, 

 however, as the broom-rape, pine-sap, beech-drops, the Indian 

 pipe, and the dodder which marks the lowest stage of degrada- 

 tion of them all appear among their race branded with the mark 

 of crime as surely as was Cain. 



No wonder this degenerate hangs its head; no wonder it 

 grows black with shame on being picked, as if its wickedness were 

 only just then discovered ! To think that a plant related on one 

 side to many of the loveliest flowers in Nature's garden the aza- 

 leas, laurels, rhododendrons, and the bonny heather and on the 

 other side to the modest but no less charming wintergreen tribe, 

 should have fallen from grace to such a depth! Its scientific 

 name, meaning a flower once turned, describes it during only a 

 part of its career. When the minute, innumerable seeds begin to 

 form, it proudly raises its head erect, as if conscious that it had 

 performed the one righteous act of its life. 



Labrador Tea 



(Ledum Groenlandicum) Heath family 

 (L. latifolium of Gray) 



Flowers White, 5-parted, ^ in. across or less, numerous, borne 

 in terminal, umbellate clusters rising from scaly, sticky bud- 

 bracts. Stem : A compact shrub i to 4 ft. high, resinous, 

 the twigs woolly-hairy. Leaves : Alternate, thick, evergreen, 

 oblong, obtuse, small, dull above, rusty-woolly beneath, the 

 margins curled. 



Preferred Habitat Swamps, bogs, wet mountain woods. 



Flowering Season May June. 



Distribution Greenland to Pennsylvania, west to Wisconsin. 



Whoever has used the homoeopathic lotion distilled from the 

 leaves of Ledum palustre, a similar species found at the far North, 



234 



