White and Greenish 



until it sometimes forms luxuriant mats, it closely resembles its 

 cousin the arbutus in its manner of growth, and has been mis- 

 taken for it by at least one poet. But its tiny, rounded, urn- 

 shaped flowers, which come in May and June, are white, not 

 salver form and pink; the entire plant is not rusty-hairy; the 

 dark little leathery evergreen leaves are spatulate, and, moreover, 

 it bears small but abundant clusters of round, berry-like fruit, an 

 attainment the arbutus still struggles for, but cannot yet reach. 

 Bumblebees are the flower's chief benefactors. Game fowl, 

 especially grouse, but many other birds too, and various animals 

 which are glad to add the clusters of smooth red bearberries to 

 their scanty winter menu, however insipid and dry they may be, 

 have distributed the seed from Labrador across Arctic America 

 to Alaska, southward to Pennsylvania, Illinois, Nebraska, and 

 California. How plants do compel insects, birds, and beasts to 

 work for them! The entire plant is astringent, and has been 

 used in medicine; also by leather dressers. 



Black or High-bush Huckleberry; Whortle- 

 berry 



{Gaylussacia resinosa) Huckleberry family 



Flowers — White and pink, paleordeep, small, cylindric, bell-shaped, 

 5-parted, borne in i -sided racemes from the sides of the stiff, 

 grayish branches. Stem: A shrub i to 3 ft. high. Leaves: 

 Alternate, oval to oblong, firm, entire edged, green oh both 

 sides, dotted underneath with resinous spots, especially when 

 young. Fruit: A round, black, bloomless, sweet, berry-like 

 drupe, containing 10 seed-like nutlets, in each of which is 

 a solitary seed. Ripe, July — August. 



Preferred Habitat— }Ao\%\., sandy soil, thickets, open woods. 



Flowering Season — May — June. 



Distribution — Newfoundland to Georgia, west to Manitoba and 

 Kentucky. 



This common huckleberry, oftener found in pies and muffins 

 by the average observer than in its native thickets, unfortunately 

 ripens in fly-time, when the squeamish boarder in the summer 

 hotel does well to carefully strutinize each mouthful. For the 

 abundant fruit set on huckleberry bushes, as on so many others, 

 we are indebted chiefly to the lesser bees, which, receiving the 

 pollen jarred out from the terminal chinks in the anther-sacs on 

 their under sides as they cling, transfer it to the protruding stigmas 

 of the next blossom visited. After fertilization, when the now 

 useless corolla falls, the ten-celled ovary is protected by the en- 

 circling calyx, that grows rapidly, swells, fills with juice, and takes 



239 



