Shrubs and Vines 

mend it, except in late spring when covered with a pro- 
fusion of very small yellow flowers. 
The prevailing colors of flowers are white, red, and 
yellow; blue and purple figure very little in nature’s 
painting; so that the genus Amorpha, containing two 
or three species in the Park, is at least a novelty, with 
its indigo blossoms, whose form—having but ome petal 
—must be accounted as a caprice or a negligence of 
nature; it is abnormal, amorphic, according to our 
limited interpretation of law. 
The leaf, as so commonly in the great leguminose 
family to which the amorpha belongs, is pinnate with 
numerous leaflets, the number in one species sometimes 
not less than fifty-one. The flowers are small, but 
repay examination, not only for their oddity, but for 
the mingling of purple and yellow in petal and stamens ; 
while their aggregation in numerous erect spikes affords 
arich yet sombre effect. Thanks are due to any plant 
that blossoms quite early or quite late; and one species 
of Amorpha, called the lead-plant, is the more accept- 
able in bloom for delaying the matter till August. 
The prominent feature of the genus Awonymus is its 
bright red pods, which so envelop the plant in autumn as 
to giveit the apt name of burning-bush. A more matter- 
of-fact name isspindle-tree, afforded by the utility of its 
wood in the manufacture of spindles. Our two native 
species are in the Park, with the addition of the Euro- 
pean in two or three varieties. The purple or purplish- 
white flowers have no marked beauty. A shrub partic- 
ularly handsome in its glossy evergreen foliage is the 
Euonymus japonicus, which is quite hardy, at least as 
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