OPEN WOODS 325 



42. Spikenard 



A. racembsa has astonishingly long, large leaves (I have 

 found them 2 or 3 feet across), decompound, with ovate, 

 heart-shaped, pointed leaflets, somewhat downy and toothed. 

 Flowers in drooping umbels or racemes, stamens and pistils 

 in different blossoms. Roots large, spicy, fragrant. 



43. Partridge-berry 



HIitchella repens. — Family, Madder. Color, white or tinged 

 with pink. Berries red. Leaves, small, roundish, shining, ever- 

 green, with short petioles. Time, June, July. 



Calyx, 4-toothed. Corolla, tubular, 4-lobed. Stamens, 4. 

 Stigmas, 4, long, on a single style. The flowers are close to- 

 gether, in pairs, their calyx-tubes later cohering and making 

 a double fruit, crowned with 8 teeth, filled with hard nutlets. 

 The pink-tipped flowers appear early in summer, and the scar- 

 let fruit lasts into the snowy season. 



A favorite plant growing only in woods, matted, with trailing 

 stems on the ground, loving best to nestle at the foot of trees. 

 The flower is delicately fragrant, and the fruit makes food for the 

 birds which spend their winter with us. 



44, V^hite Snake-root 



Eupatbrium ageratoldes. — Family, Composite. Color, 

 white. Leaves, opposite,, long petioled, with cut margins, 

 pointed, broad near the base. Time, late summer. 



Corollas, tubular. 



A handsome plant, 2 to 3 feet high, spreading and branching, 

 whose pure white corymbs of flowers and long-stemmed, thin 

 leaves mass finely in the woods. 



45 



E. aromdticum is very similar, with leaves on shorter stems 

 and flowers in large corymbs. 



