Magenta to Pink 



There is little use trying to coax this shyest of sylvan flowers 

 into our gardens where other members of its family, rhododen- 

 drons, laurels, and azaleas make themselves delightfully at home. 

 It is wild as a hawk, an untamable creature that slowly pines to 

 death when brought into contact with civilization. Greedy street 

 venders, who ruthlessly tear up the plant by the yard, and others 

 without even the excuse of eking'out a paltry income by its sale, 

 have already exterminated it within a wide radius of our Eastern 

 cities. How curious that the majority of people show their ap- 

 preciation of a flower's beauty only by selfishly, ignorantly pick- 

 ing every specimen they can find ! 



In many localities the arbutus sets no fruit, for it is still un- 

 dergoing evolutionary changes looking toward the perfecting of 

 an elaborate system to insure cross-fertilization. Already it has 

 attained to perfume, nectar, and color to attract quantities of in- 

 sects, chiefly flies and small female bees ; but in some flowers the 

 anthers produce no pollen for them to carry, while others are 

 filled with grains, yet all the stigmas in the neighboring clusters 

 may be defective. The styles and the filaments are of several dif- 

 ferent lengths, showing a tendency toward trimorphism, perhaps, 

 like -the wonderful purple loosestrife ; but at present the flower 

 pursues a most wasteful method of distributing pollen, and in 

 different sections of the country acts so differently that its phases 

 are impossible to describe except to the advanced student. They 

 may, however, be best summarized in the words of Professor Asa 

 Gray : " The flowers are of two kinds, each with two modifica- 

 tions ; the two main kinds characterized by the nature and per- 

 fection of the stigma, along with more or less abortion of the 

 stamens ; their modifications by the length of the style." 



When our English cousins speak of the arbutus, they have in 

 mind a very different species from ours. Theirs is the late flower- 

 ing strawberry-tree, an evergreen shrub with clustering white 

 blossoms and beautiful rough, red berries. Indeed, the name 

 arbutus is derived from the Celtic word Arboise, meaning rough 

 fruit. 



Large or American Cranberry 



[Oxycoccus macrocarpus) Huckleberry family 

 {Vaccinium macrocarpon of Gray) 



Flowers — Light pink, about yi in. across, nodding on slender pedi- 

 cels from sides and tips of erect branches. Calyx round, 4- 

 or 5-parted ; corolla a long cone in bud, its four or five nearly 

 separate, narrow petals turned far backward later ; 8 or 10 

 stamens, the anthers united into a protruding cone, its hollow 

 tubes shedding pollen by a pore at tip. Stem : Creeping or 

 trailing, slender, woody, i to 3 ft. long, its leafy branches 8 



Q 129 



