AMERICAN BARRENWORT.
Vancouveria parviflora, Greene. Barberry Family.
Stems.—One or two feet high. Leaves.—All radical; twice to thrice ternately compound. Leaflets.—One to two inches broad; rich shining green; persisting; undulate and membrane-margined. Flowers.—Twenty-five to fifty, in loose panicles; small; with six to nine sepal-like bracts. Parts in sixes all in front of one another. Sepals.—Petaloid; two lines long. Petals.—White to lavender. Stamens.—Erect; closely appressed to the pistil. Ovary.—One-celled. Style stoutish. Hab.—Coast Ranges of Central California.
There is no more exquisite plant in our coast woods than the American barrenwort. Its delicate threadlike stems, which are yet strong and wiry, hold up its spreading evergreen leaves, every leaflet in its own place. There is a likeness in these leaves to the fronds of our Californian maidenhair, and one could easily imagine the maidenhair amplified, strengthened, and polished into this form. The leaflets are also somewhat ivy-like in form.
In June its delicate, airy panicles of small white blossoms appear. These are especially interesting as belonging to the Barberry family, where all the floral organs stand in front of one another, and the anthers open by cunningly contrived little uplifting valves. These plants are said to grow upon bushy hillsides, in masses sometimes several feet across. But I have never seen it with other than an exclusive and rather solitary habit, growing in shaded forests. We have one or two other species.