CROWBERRY FAMILY 



air of mountain tops and is not very particular as to 

 wet or dry if only its home is cool enough. It lifts its 

 branches three to four inches. It curves the edges of 

 its tiny leaves backward until they meet, in order to 

 lessen evaporation. Although it lives amid moisture, 

 it must economize its store because so much of the 

 time the temperature is below freezing, when no leafy 

 plant can work. Linnaeus records that it lives on the 

 mountains of Lapland, where other plants perish with 

 the cold. Just over the mountains from Sitka it is 

 found in great abundance ; also in Scotland it abounds, 

 and is there the badge of the clan McLean. Cattle do 

 not browse upon its foliage. The berries are rather 

 pleasant to the taste ; are eaten by man and eagerly 

 sought by the arctic birds. The plant will grow in 

 northern gardens, but requires a moist, boggy soil and 

 a shaded situation. The seeds are slow to germinate, 

 and the seedlings are slow in growth. 



Among its many local names are Crakeberry, Crow- 

 pea, Black-berried Heath, Wire Ling, and the Cana- 

 dians call the berries Camerines. 



In a certain way an arctic plant appeals to the imag- 

 ination more than other plants. It has by variation 

 and natural selection, through ages unmeasured and 

 immeasurable, adapted itself to the harshest climate 

 that this earth produces ; and looking out toward the 

 limit of everlasting snow, it apparently calls life good 

 and the earth enjoyable. Most of the distinctively 

 arctic plants encircle the globe with little or no varia- 

 tion in form. There seems to be no distinct Asia, 

 Europe, or America, along those higher latitudes; all 

 are alike in their pitiless cold. 



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