FLOWERING SHRUBS 
are upright, but they droop downward in Autumn from the 
weight of the large round snow-white berries. The brown 
bony seeds lie embedded in the granular cellular pulp. 
Though quite innocuous, the fruit is insipid and more useful 
for ornament than for any other purpose, as far as man is 
concerned, but forms a bountiful supply of food to many of 
the birds that remain with us late in the Autumn. The 
plant multiplies by suckers from the roots and by seeds. 
The leaves are small, oval, slightly toothed, of a dull, dark 
bluish-green. This shrub is a native of all the Northern States 
of America, extending northward and westward in Canada. 
It belongs to the same natural order as the Honeysuckle, that 
lovely creeping plant the Twin-flower, and the Elders. 
Swert-rern—Comptonia asplenifolia (Ait.). 
The popular name by which this shrub is known among 
Canadians—Sweet-fern—is improperly applied, and leads to 
the erroneous impression that the plant is a species of Fern. 
It is a member of the Sweet-gale family and belongs to the 
Natural Order Myricacee. 
The Sweet-fern grows chiefly on light loam or sandy soil, 
in open dry uplands, and on wastes by roadsides, forming 
low thickets of small, weak, straggling bushes, which give 
out a delicious aromatic scent—somewhat like the flavor of 
freshly grated nutmegs; but the smell is evanescent, and 
soon evaporates when the leaves have been gathered for any 
length of time. The twig-like branches are of a fine reddish 
color; the leaves are long, very narrow, and deeply in- 
dented in alternate rounded notches, resembling some of the 
Aspleniums in outline, whence the specific name. The 
flowers are of two kinds: the sterile in cylindrical catkins, 
with scale-like bracts, and the fertile in bur-like heads. 
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