44 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
The heavy curtains of leucothoe that hang over 
the water-courses have become embroidered with 
long white flower spikes. And walking at higher 
levels you will come across the little umbrella-leaf 
with its uplifted head of white flowers. You might 
not notice it among the wealth of more striking blos- 
soms all about you, but you will never pass it un- 
heeding when you remember that there is only one 
other known species of its family, and that that 
one opens its flowers in far-away Japan. 
If interested in these curious relationships, you 
will find on these mountains many a modest flower 
whose genealogy is inextricably intertwined with 
the flowers of the Orient. In this mysterious sister- 
hood is the wistaria that so often adorns our homes 
and which is most closely connected in our thoughts 
with Japan, which we Imagine ever wreathed in 
wistaria blossoms, as we see them twining about the 
screens and the drawings that come from that far land 
to us. It is the Japanese wistaria we cultivate and 
with which we are familiar, though we ourselves 
have one member of this very ornamental family. 
You will come upon our wistaria sometime in your 
wanderings in the lower mountains, where it will 
be seen climbing the trees and covering them with 
its mantle of leaves and its myriads of close bunches 
of purple-blue flowers, a charming thing whose 
day among the petted darlings of the garden doubt- 
less yet will come. 
Of course, growing everywhere over the moun- 
tains, though more abundantly and of larger size 
