52 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



In moist woods and thickets, Nova Scotia to Ontario and Minnesota 

 south to Florida and Arkansas. Flowering in April and May. 



( )ne of the commonest and best known of our spring flowers, coming 

 in company with the Hepatica, Spring Beauty, and Squirrel Corn, but 

 usually in its prime a little later than these. The white Dog's-tooth Violet 

 ( E r y t h r o n ium a 1 b i d u m Nuttall) , with leaves less or not at all 

 spotted and pinkish white flowers, is very rare. 



Ague or Colicroot; Star Grass 



Aletris farinosa Linnaeus 



Plate I 6 



Leaves mostly basal, lanceolate and spreading, forming a dense cluster, 

 lanceolate, long pointed, narrowed at the base, pale yellowish green, 2 to 

 7 inches long, one-fourth to i inch wide. Roots numerous, tough and 

 very bitter. Stem or scape i to 3 feet tall, bearing a few distant bractlike 

 leaves. The terminal raceme of flowers 4 to 12 inches long; flowers erect 

 on short pedicels subtended by small bracts; perianth tubular-oblong, six- 

 lobed, white or the short lobes yellowish, about one-fourth to one-third 

 of an inch long and less than half as thick, mealy-roughened without; 

 capsules ovoid, about one-sixth of an inch long, inclosed by the withering- 

 persistent perianth. 



In dry, mostly sandy soil, Maine to Ontario and Minnesota, south to 

 Florida and Arkansas. Flowering in June and July. In New York rarely 

 seen except in the sandy regions adjacent to the coast. Extremely abun- 

 dant on sterile sandy fields like the Hempstead plains of Long Island, where 

 it is very conspicuous in early summer. It possesses a number of 

 vernacular names, such as Ague Grass, Blazing Star, Bitter Grass, Crow 

 Corn, Mealy Starwort, Aloeroot, Starroot, Huskroot, and others. 



