206 FAMILIES OF FLOWERING PLANTS 
great profusion, and are very attractive to insects. The genus contains 
about 25 species, distributed through East Asia and the Canary Islands, 
besides North America. 
Family Pyrolaceae. Wintergreen Family. Includes 3 genera and 
about 20 species, all natives of the northern hemisphere. They are low 
perennial herbs, usually evergreen, with white or pink flowers, having a 
4-5-lobed calyx, a 4-5-parted corolla, stamens twice as many as the 
lobes, and a several-celled ovary, becoming in fruit a loculicidal cap- 
sule. While the corolla is usually quite regular, the style is often declined 
or bent downward, giving the flower a one-sided appearance. The true 
wintergreen or checkerberry (Gaultheria) oddly enough does not belong 
to this family, but to the heath family. The Pyrolas are round-leaved 
plants, with flowers in racemes, and leaves all basal. Moneses, a mono- 
typic genus, differs from Pyrola in having a one-fiowered scape. The 
remaining genus of the family, Chimaphila, is known popularly by its 
original Indian name, “ pipsissewa,” though it is also called prince’s 
pine. It has leafy stems and white or purplish flowers borne in 
corymbs rather than in racemes. There are six species, natives of 
North America, Mexico and Asia. 
Family Monotropaceae. Indian-pipe Family. What rambler in 
the June or July woods has failed to observe the clusters of Indian-pipe 
just breaking through a mass of sodden and decayed leaves? And 
what other flower could bear so appropriately the suggestive designa- 
tion of “corpse-plant?” Its looks certainly do not belie its nature, for 
in common with all other members of the family it is a saphrophyte, or 
in other words, a plant deriving its sustenance from decaying vegetable 
matter, like most of the fleshy fungi. There are about 9 genera and a 
dozen species in the Monotropaceae, and they are nearly all natives of 
the northern hemisphere. The flowering scapes are entirely destitute 
of leaves, bearing only small scales; the whole plant is waxy white, 
yellowish or red in color. Flowers erect or nodding, with a 2-6-parted 
calyx and 3-6-parted corolla, which in one California genus is entirely 
wanting. 
The snow plant of the Sierras (Sarcodes sanguinea) has been de- 
scribed and figured in Taz Pranr Wortp for November, 1900 (IV., Pl. 
XVIII) and will serve as a good general type of the family. 
Family Ericaceae. Heath Family. We pass now to a large group, 
formerly thought to include all three of the families discussed above, 
but, as now understood, comprising about 55 genera and over 1000 
species. They are herbs, shrubs or trees of very wide distribution, but 
most abundant in cool latitudes. The flowers may be distinguished by 
the free, 4-5-parted and usually persistent calyx, and by the regular 
