3830 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
Tue Cuzquer Berry. Partrince Berry. G. procumbens. L. 
Figured in Bigelow’s Medical Botany, Plate 22. Audubon’s Birds, with the 
Wood Wren, IJ, Plate 179. 
A delicate, fragrant, evergreen plant, growing in the deep 
shade of other evergreens, throwing up from a creeping root a 
tuft of chree or four, sometimes seven or eight leaves, and nearly 
as many flowers. Stem an inch or two high, dotted with white 
dots, downy, with one or two linear, brown, abortive leaves 
near the surface of the ground. 
Leaves elliptical or obovate, pointed at each extremity, or 
sometimes rounded at the end with a delicate, reflected, mem- 
branous border, and a few distant teeth or serratures cnding 
often in a bristle. They are of a leathery texture and of a pol- 
ished dark green above, lighter below, supported by a short, 
rather stout, often hairy petiole. 
Flowers of a pearly white, solitary, from the axil of the 
leaves, on white or reddish, slender, hairy or downy {footstalks, 
one third or one half an inch long. Calyx double; the exterior 
of two very short, broad, concave, pointed bracts, the interior 
ending in five or six triangular teeth. Corolla monopetalous, 
conical, broad at base, and gradually diminishing towards the 
top, where it suddenly contracts and terminates in five or six 
rounded teeth, nearly closing the orifice. Filaments very short, 
white or pink, hairy without. Anthers as long as the filaments, 
set upon their inner side, brown, large at base, divided half way 
down, each division terminated with two pointed bristles or 
awns. Style nearly as long as the corolla, uniform, surmount- 
ing a five-sided, or rounded, greenish ovary, which rests on a 
deep green disk with ten projecting teeth. The flower-stalks 
bend down, so that the flowers and fruit hide themselves under 
the leaves. 
Flowers in May and also in the end of summer and in au- 
tumn; and the fruit is ripe in autumn and inspring. The berry 
is of a bright scarlet, pleasant to the taste, but rather insipid. 
It is often eaten in the spring when no other berry is to be 
found. Its importance to the partridges and other birds who 
