FLOWERING SHRUBS 
when the beauty of the foliage of the surrounding trees and 
shrubs has been swept away before the autumnal frosts and 
wintry winds. 
In spring and early summer the white fragrant flowers, 
in crowded flat heads, adorn the low shores. Later in the 
fall the white berries on the bright red sprays are hardly 
less attractive. The fruit is unpalatable for man, but is 
eaten by some of ‘the water-fowl that have their haunts in 
the lakes and inland waters. This species is the Kinnikinnic 
of the western and prairie Indians. 
PARTRIDGEBERRY—TRAILING WINTERGREEN—WMitchella 
repens (L.). 
Another of our pretty red-berried creeping forest plants is 
the Partridgeberry. The flexile branchlets of this little plant, 
spreading from the joints of the trailing stem, form a mat 
of dark green foliage covering unsightly patches of decaying 
wood, roots, and stones with many a graceful wreath, as if 
Nature kindly placed them there to veil the rugged ground 
with grace and beauty, in the same way as the green ivy 
clothes and adorns the mouldering ruin with its enduring 
verdure. 
Each slender leafy spray of our pretty Wintergreen is: 
terminated by tubular star-shaped twin blossoms, which 
are divided at the margin into five sharply-pointed segments, 
white, sometimes slightly tinged with pink. The ovaries are: 
united at the base of the flowers and form one double-eyed 
round berry for each pair of flowers; the interior of the 
flower-tube is hairy. The scent is sweet, faintly resembling 
that of the White Jessamine. 
The berries remain persistent all through the winter. 
They ripen to brilliant scarlet in the autumn and so con- 
tinue till the return of spring. Thus we may find fresh 
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