THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



47" 



root^live-for-ever and life-ever-lasting require no hint. We 

 can understand the origin of witch hazel when we know 

 that hasail was a Saxon word for headdress, alluding to 

 the peculiar flowers. The ancient name of our vervain of 

 the pasture was ferfaen, Celtic, meaning to remove stone, 

 though its application is obscure, its natural habitat not 

 being in rocky situations. 

 Hartford, Conn. 



A RARE PERFUME. 



BY MRS. A. E. GOETTING. 



IN my wanderings I have several times been arrested by 

 a peculiar spicy perfume that always recalls the appe. 

 tising one that floated out from the box where grand- 

 mother kept her spice cookies. I first noticed it in Wis- 

 consin as I wandered b3'^ a prairie stream flowing through 

 black muck. It is an elusive perfume that comes and 

 goes. Is it possible that the breath of these flowers is 

 only liberated by their insect friends? After days of 

 searching the perfume led me to the ground-nut {Apios) 

 whose small dark purple blossoms easily hid in the tangled 

 undergrowth. 



Walking by the side of a crazy North Carolina stream 

 in 1896 the south wind bore to us this perfume that I had 

 not smelled for years. It could not be the ground-nut for 

 the situation was w^rong ; then too the perfume was finer 

 and spicier. Our hunt that day was unsuccessful, but a 

 few days later, sometime in April, we came upon the same 

 incense, a little further south in a shady beech-wood off 

 from the main creek. This time the sharper eyes of two 

 of my young botanists discovered the purple-brown spikes 

 of the North Carolina beech-drops or sw^eet pine sap 

 {Schweinitzia odorata). The brown leaves so effectually 

 concealed the leafless plant that, like the ground-nut, the 

 perfume led to the discovery. 



• When I showed my treasure to my friend, she told me 

 how she had known Schweinitzia, and how though she 

 had scented the flower she had never been able to find one. 



