138 PEARLS AND PEBBLES. 



that kindly little evergreen, the dark round-leafed 

 Partridge Berry (Mitchella repens), with its fragrant 

 starry white blossoms, and at the foot of that old hem- 

 lock spruce there is a cluster of orchids, the handsome 

 striped or coral-rooted orchids. 



These showy flowers come up destitute of green 

 leaves, but with many stems, some more than a foot in 

 height and loaded with flowers of a pale fawn color, 

 striped with deep crimson. Silvery scales take the 

 place of leaf and bract, and there are often from ten to 

 twenty or thirty flowers on the scaly stems, a mass of 

 fine color growing closely together. The irregular 

 white-knobbed root stalk has given it the name of 

 Coral Root (Corallorhiza multiflora). 



There are other species of the orchid family dispersed 

 among the pines, though it is generally in boggy or 

 peaty soil these rare and singular plants are found. Yet 

 here is a near connection — and one often found in the 

 pine woods, where we notice it growing on the decaying 

 trunk of some fallen tree ; — the pearly-flowered Rattle- 

 snake Plantain {Goody era repens). Its deep green 

 leaves, with the milk-white traceries over their surface 

 and the semi-transparent sac-lipped little flower, surely 

 make it deserving of a better name, and one more in 

 keeping with its near neighbor and relative, the Ladies' 

 Tresses, so-called from the spiral arrangement of its leaves 

 and stalks. 



But the slanting sunbeams gilding the red trunks of 



