THE MARSH ANDROMEDA— continued. 
no appendages to their anthers, and, very often, a loose winged testa to their seeds ; 
the Arbutoide# , including Andromeda and Arbutus , with deciduous corolla, appendiculate 
anthers, and no wings to their seeds ; the Vaccinioidete , with deciduous corolla, 
appendiculate anthers, wingless seeds, and an inferior ovary ; and the Ericoide<e , with 
a persistent corolla, anthers generally appendiculate, superior ovary, dry fruit, and 
round wingless seeds. 
Andromeda is a genus comprising plants varying much in size and Arctic-alpine 
in distribution. It has a valvate calyx of five sepals which persists in the fruit stage, 
an urceolate corolla with five minute teeth, ten stamens, and a dry capsular fruit 
with five chambers, which bursts loculicidally into five valves. The leaves of our 
one little British species were compared by the early botanical writers to those of 
Rosemary, its flowers to those of the Arbutus , and its capsule to that of Cistus. Such 
book-names as Marsh Rosemary have accordingly been proposed for it ; but the plant 
is, perhaps, too rare to have attracted much popular notice. The name Polifolia — 
once generic and now specific — refers to the polished upper surface of the leaves, 
though their dark blue-green colour above, turning to vivid red in autumn, inrolled 
margins, and glaucous under surface are even more noticeable. Their form, points, 
and texture seem a protection against injury by snow. 
As the painter and the sculptor delight to embody their ideals of beauty in 
representations of the fabled heroines of Classical mythology, so botanists have 
been pleased to bestow the names of these lovely women upon the modest beauties 
of the plant world. With a fancy which was one of his most remarkable characteristics, 
Linne saw in the surroundings of this little flower of northern peat-bogs, growing 
on “ turfy hillocks in the midst of swamps frequented by toads, and other reptiles,” 
some resemblance to those of the beautiful daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia, 
whose figure, chained on a rock, that she might be devoured by a sea-monster, is so 
familiar to every student of modern art. So too Sir William Hooker, echoing the 
mood of the master, tells how in Scotland “this beautiful tribe of plants grow in 
dreary and northern wastes, feigned to be the abode of preternatural monsters.” 
Within the delicately blushing bells, the ten stamens present a remarkable form. 
They have a subulate filament clothed with hairs which serve apparently to hold 
the honey secreted by a ring of hypogynous glands : the chocolate-brown anther 
suspended from its apex opens by two sub-terminal pores which are pressed at first 
against the style ; and from the apex of each anther project two long curved awns 
which generally cross one another and radiate outward towards the corolla, like the 
spokes of a wheel. 
As in the case of the Violet, so here, Ruskin’s notion of the appropriateness of 
female names for harmlessly beautiful plants is at fault, for Andromeda Polifolia is an 
acrid narcotic and is said to prove sometimes fatal to sheep. 
