YELLOW AND ORANGE WILD FLOWERS 
them. The long, horizontal, club-shaped rootstock 
which is white, crisp and juicy, and tastes not unlike 
cucumbers, is said to have been relished by the Indians. 
It has also been used as a remedy for torpid livers. 
The slender, unbranched stalk is slightly adorned with 
a cottony fuzz, and grows from one to two and a half 
feet in\height, in moist woods and thickets. It bears 
usually two whorls of leaves. The larger whorl con- 
sists of from five to nine thin, stemless, oblong, taper- 
pointed, toothless and three-ribbed leaves, and occurs 
half-way up the stalk. ‘The other whorl is borne at the 
top, directly under the flowers, and the smaller leaves, 
numbering from two to five, are frequently short- 
stemmed. Plants which bear no flowers have only one 
whorl of leaves, and that terminates the stalk. From two 
to nine inconspicuous, spidery flowers are set on slender 
curving stems that spring from the centre of the upper 
leaves, and hang usually below them. They have six 
spreading recurved petal-like parts, six brown-tipped 
stamens, and a pistil with three very long and curving 
stigmas. The species ranges from Nova Scotia to On- 
tario and Minnesota, south to Florida and Tennessee. 
CARRION FLOWER 
Smilax herbacea. Smilax Family. 
The Carrion Flower emits a remarkably putrid odour, 
so offensive and disagreeable that Thoreau says: “It 
smells exactly like a dead rat in the wall.” Happily, 
however, this objectionable feature lasts only through the 
flowering season, and then the ornamental features of 
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