Pyrola
Pýrola bracteàta
Pink
Summer
California
One of our most attractive woodland plants, from six to twenty inches tall, with handsome, glossy, rather leathery, slightly scalloped leaves. The buds are deep reddish-pink and the flowers are half an inch across, pink or pale pink, and waxy, with deep pink stamens and a green pistil, with a conspicuous style, curving down and the tip turning up. The pretty color and odd shape of these flowers give them a character all their own and they are sweet-scented. This is found in Yosemite and in other cool, shady, moist places, and there are several similar kinds.
There are several kinds of Chimaphila, of North America and Asia, with reclining stems and erect, leafy branches.
Pipsissewa
Chimáphìla Menzièsii
White
Summer
Northwest and California
A very attractive little evergreen plant, three to six inches high, with dark green, glossy, leathery, toothed, leaves, sometimes mottled with white, and one to three, pretty flowers, about three-quarters of an inch across, with yellowish sepals and waxy-white or pinkish petals, more or less turned back. The ovary forms a green hump in the center and has a broad, flat, sticky stigma, with five scallops, and the ten anthers are pale yellow or purplish. This has a delicious fragrance, like Lily-of-the-valley, and grows in pine woods in the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges. Chimaphila is a Greek name, meaning "winter-loving."
INDIAN PIPE FAMILY. Monotropaceae.
A small family, mostly North American; saprophytes, (plants growing on decaying vegetable matter,) without leaves; flowers perfect; calyx two- to six-parted; corolla united or not, with three to six lobes or petals, occasionally lacking; stamens six to twelve; ovary superior; fruit a capsule.
Pipsissewa—Chimaphila Menziesii.
Pyrola—P. bracteata.
Snow-plant
Sarcòdes sanguínea
Red
Spring, summer
Cal., Oreg., Nev.