HARPER'S GUIDE TO WILD FLOWERS 



maining and crowning the ripened berry. Corolla, bell - shape, 

 contracted above, 5-parted, small. Stamens, 10, the anthers 

 opening by a pore at the apex. Fruit, a black, berry-like drupe 

 formed by the clinging of the calyx to the ovary, 10-celled, each 

 cell containing a bony seed. Many of these fail of coming to per- 

 fection, only 2 or 3 maturing. May and June. 



A much-branched shrub, 1 to 3 feet high, in dry or sandy 

 soil, woods or thickets, along the Atlantic coast and westward 

 to Wisconsin and Kentucky. Fruit ripe in July and August. 

 This is the common black huckleberry of the markets, a 

 glossy -black, hard-seeded fruit. There are many varieties, 

 one with larger berries, one with leaves and berries covered 

 with a blackish bloom. 



Of the Genus Gaylussacia there are nearly 80 species, some 

 of them trees, most of them bearing edible berries. 



Whortleberry means hart's-berry, from the Saxon heort- 

 berry. Along the Atlantic seaboard there are but 3 species, 

 not confounding them with blueberries, which are now con- 

 sidered a separate genus. The leaves of all turn bright red 

 in fall, and are among those shrubs which help to cover the 

 fields, pastures, and roadsides with masses of fine color. 



Blue Tangle. Dangleberry 



G. frondbsa. is a species with large, pale green, blunt-pointed 

 leaves and flowers hanging or dangling from long, slender pe- 

 duncles in irregular clusters. Fruit, round, large, bluish black- 

 berries with a whitish bloom, ripening later than the preceding. 



One of the sweetest and finest of these fruits, found grow- 

 ing on bushes in moist woods or by the sides of lakes or slow 

 streams, along the coast of New England southward, in the 

 mountains of Pennsylvania — where it attains its greatest 

 perfection — to the Gulf. (See illustration, p. 445.) 



Dwarf Huckleberry 



G. dumbsa is a branching bush 1 to 5 feet high, with creeping 

 base and hairy, glandular stems. Flowers, 5 in a cluster, in 

 June. Corolla, large, waxy white, sometimes tinged with pink. 

 Anthers, brown, divided nearly to their base, on white filaments. 

 Shrub, resinous-dotted. The round, black fruit is rather insipid. 



In sandy swamps all along our coast. 



Blueberry 



Vaccinium <virgktum. — Family, Heath. Color, pink or reddish. 

 Flowers, open bell-shape, in clusters on naked branches. Berries, 



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