Page:The Maine Woods (1864).djvu/323

Rh for berry-bearing shrubs, birds, and small quadrupeds. One settler told me that not only blackberries and raspberries, but mountain-maples came in, in the clearing and burning.

Though plants are often referred to primitive woods as their locality, it cannot be true of very many, unless the woods are supposed to include such localities as I have mentioned. Only those which require but little light, and can bear the drip of the trees, penetrate the woods, and these have commonly more beauty in their leaves than in their pale and almost colorless blossoms.

The prevailing flowers and conspicuous small plants of the woods, which I noticed, were: Clintonia borealis, Linnæa, checkerberry (Gaultheria procumbens), Aralia nudicaulis (wild sarsaparilla), great round-leaved orchis, Dalibarda repens, Chiogenes hispidula (creeping snowberry), Oxalis acetosella (common wood-sorrel), Aster acuminatus, Pyrola secunda (one-sided pyrola), Medeola Virginica (Indian cucumber-root), small Circæa (enchanter's nightshade), and perhaps Cornus Canadensis (dwarf cornel).

Of these, the last of July, 1858, only the Aster acuminatus and great round-leaved orchis were conspicuously in bloom.

The most common flowers of the river and lake shores were: Thalictrum cornuti (meadow-rue), Hypericum ellipticum, mutilum, and Canadense (St. John's-wort), horsemint, horehound, Lycopus Virginicus and Europæus, var. sinuatus (bugle-weed), Scutellaria galericulata (skull-cap), Solidago lanceolata and squarrosa East Branch (golden-rod), Diplopappus umbellatus (double-bristled aster), Aster radula, Cicuta maculata and bulbifera (water-hemlock), meadow-sweet, Lysimachia stricta and ciliata (loose-strife), Galium trifidum (small bed-straw), Lilium Canadense (wild yellow-lily), Platanthera peramœna and psycodes (great purple orchis and small purple-fringed orchis), Mimulus ringens (monkey-flower), dock (water), blue flag, Hydrocotyle Americana (marsh pennywort), Sanicula Canadensis? (black snake-root). Clematis Virginiana? (common virgin's-bower), Nasturtium palustre (marsh cress), Ranunculus recurvatus (hooked crowfoot), Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed), Aster Tradescanti (Tradescant's aster), Aster miser, also longifolius, Eupatorium purpureum apparently, lake shores (Joe-Pye-weed), Apocynum Cannabinum East Branch (Indian hemp), Polygonum cilinode (bind-weed), and others. Not to mention among inferior orders wool-grass and the sensitive fern.