THE ANDROMEDA.
The plants of New England which are most nearly allied to the heath are the different species of Andromeda. These plants vary in height from one foot to seven or eight feet. They resemble the whortleberry in their general appearance, and in their leaves and flowers, but their fruit is a dry capsule, not a berry, and their foliage is not tinted in the autumn. They are, I believe, without an English name. Several species are indigenous in New England, but only two or three of them are common. One of the most beautiful, though extremely rare, is the Water Andromeda, which is found near the edges of ponds. This is the species which suggested to Linnæus the name given by him to the genus. He describes it in his “Tour of Lapland” as “decorating the marshy grounds in a most agreeable manner. The flowers are quite blood-red before they expand; but when full-grown the corolla is of a flesh-color. Scarcely any painter’s art can so happily imitate the beauty of a fine female complexion; still less could any artificial color upon the face itself bear a comparison with this lovely blossom.” He thought of Andromeda as described by the poets, and traced a fancied resemblance between the virgin and the plant, to which it seemed to him her name might be appropriately given.
One of the most common of our small water shrubs, very homely when viewed from a distance, but neat and elegant under close inspection, is the Dwarf Andromeda. It covers in some parts of the country wide tracts of swampy land, after the manner of the heath, and is not very unlike it in botanical characters, with its slender branches and myrtle-like foliage. It opens its flowers very early in spring, arranged in a long row, like those of the great Solomon’s-seal, extending almost from the roots to the extremities of the branches. The flowers all lean one way, each flower proceeding from the axil of a small leaf. Though an evergreen, the verdure of its foliage is so dull and rusty that it is hardly distinguished in the meadows which are occupied by it.
Another remarkable species is the panicled Andromeda, a tall and very common shrub in Eastern Massachusetts, distinguished from the whortleberry by its large compound clusters of densely crowded white flowers of a nearly globular shape. These flowers are much neater and more beautiful on examination than those of the blueberry, and resemble clusters of white beads. They are succeeded by a dry capsular fruit, bearing a superficial resemblance to white peppercorns. The fishermen of our coast have always employed the branches of this shrub, with those of the clethra, on account of their firmness and durability, as coverings to the “flakes” which are used for the spreading and drying of codfish. These two shrubs were formerly distinguished by them as the “black and the white pepper-bush,” one having berries of a lighter color than the other.
MAYFLOWER.
BRANCH OF THE RED ROSE.