Mag^enta to Pink 



whose graceful alternate branching stem attains a height of two 

 feet only under most favorable conditions, from July to September 

 opens a succession of pink flowers that often fade to white. The 

 yellow eye is bordered with carmine. They measure about one 

 inch across, and are usually solitary at the ends T?f branches, or 

 else sway on slender peduncles from the axils. The upper leaves 

 are narrow and bract-like ; those lower down gradually widen as 

 they approach the root. 



Similar to the Rose of Plymouth is the even more graceful 

 Slender Marsh Pink (5. Campanulata) — the S. gracilis of Gray— . 

 whose upper leaves are almost thread-like in their narrowness. 

 Its five calyx lobes, too, are exceedingly slender, and often as long 

 as the corolla lobes. One of our soldiers in Cuba, during the 

 Spanish War, sent home to his sister in Massachusetts some of 

 these same little flowers in a letter. "You would just love to 

 see the marshes here," he wrote. "They are filled with beauti- 

 ful little pink flowers. 1 wish I knew their names." That soldier 

 had passed by New England marshes aglow with the blossorns 

 all his life, but he had never noticed them until all his perceptions 

 became quickened by the stimulus of travel and the excitement 

 of war. How blind and deaf we all are in some directions ; hav- 

 ing eyes we see not, and ears we hear not, in the natural as in 

 the spiritual realm. 



No danger of confusing the Large Marsh Pink (5. dodecandra) 

 — 5. chlorotdes of Gray — with its smaller, more branching rela- 

 tives. It displays few flowers to a plant, but each measures two 

 and a half inches or less across, and has from nine to twelve pink 

 (or rarely white) petals. This sabbatia often chooses the sandy 

 borders of ponds for its habitat. 



Spreading Dogbane; Fly-trap Dogbane; 

 Honey-bloom ; Bitter-root 



{Apocynum androsaemifolium) Dogbane family 



Flowers — Delicate pink, veined with a deeper shade, fragrant, bell- 

 shaped, about Yi in. across, borne in loose terminal cymes. 

 Calyx 5-parted ; corolla of 5 spreading, recurved lobes united 

 into a tube ; within the tube 5 tiny, triangular appendages 

 alternate with stamens ; the arrow-shaped anthers united 

 around the stigma and slightly adhering to it. Stem : i to 4 

 ft. high, with forking, spreading, leafy branches. Leaves: 

 Opposite, entire-edged, broadly oval, narrow at base, paler, 

 and more or less hairy below. Fruit: Two pods about 4 in, 

 long. 



133 



