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.
THE ROSE.
In my description of flowering trees and shrubs, I must not omit the Rose, the most celebrated and the most beautiful of flowers: the delight of mankind in all ages and in every country; the pride of all gardens, and the chief ornament of the field and woodside; the poetic emblem of love and the symbol of truth, inasmuch as its beauty is accompanied by the virtues of sweetness and purity. In every language have its praises been sung, and poets have bestowed upon it all the epithets that could be applied to a direct gift from Heaven. From its graces, too, they borrow those images they would bestow upon the living objects of their idolatry. The modest blush of innocence is but the tint of the Rose; its hues are the flush of morning and the “purple light of love.” The nightingale is supposed to have become the chief of singing birds by warbling the praises of the Rose, inspired by the beauty of this flower with that divine ecstasy which characterizes his lay. In all ages the Rose has had part in the principal festivities of the people, the offering of love and the token of favor; the crown of the bride at bridal feasts, and the emblem of all virtue and all delight.
So important a shrub as the Rose cannot be an inconspicuous feature either in our wild or our domestic scenery. Every wood contains one or two species in their wild state, and every enclosure in our villages some beautiful foreign roses, which are equally familiar to our sight. I have nothing to say of the multitude of improved varieties lately introduced by florists. There is a point of perfection that cannot be surpassed in the improvement of any species of plant. An additional number of petals does not always increase the beauty of a flower. In the scale of all kinds of perfection, both physical and moral, there is a degree beyond which improvement is only the addition of insipidity.