WILD ROSEMARY MARCH HOLY ROSE WATER ANDROMEDA MOORWORT
(Andromeda Polifolia) Heath family
Flowers - White or pink-tinted, small, round, tubular, 5-toothed
at the tip; drooping from curved footstalks in few-flowered
terminal umbels. Calyx deeply 5-parted; 10 bearded stamens; style
like a column. Stem: A sparingly branched, dwarf shrub, 6 in. to
3
ft. tall. Leaves: Linear to lance-shape, evergreen, dark and
glossy above, with a prominent white bloom underneath, the
margins curled.
Preferred Habitat - Cool bogs, wet places.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - Pennsylvania and Michigan, far northward.
Only a delightfully imaginative optimist like Linnaeus could feel
the enthusiasm he expended on this dwarf shrub, with its little,
white, heath-like flowers, which most of us consider rather
insignificant, if the truth be told. But then the blossoms he
found in Lapland must have been much pinker than any seen in
American swamps, since they reminded him of "a fine female
complexion."
"This plant is always fixed on some little turfy hillock in the
midst of the swamps," he wrote, "just as Andromeda herself was
chained to a rock in the sea, which bathed her feet as the fresh
water does the roots of this plant.... As the distressed virgin
cast down her blushing face through excessive affliction, so does
this rosy-colored flower hang its head, growing paler and paler
till it withers away." Under the old go-as-you-please method of
applying scientific names, most of this shrub's relatives shared
with it the name of the fair maid whom Perseus rescued from the
dragons.
The beautiful, low-growing STAGGERBUSH (Pieris Mariana) has its
small, cylindric, five-parted, white or pink-tinted flowers
clustered at intervals along one side of the upright, nearly
leafless, smooth, dark-dotted branches of the preceding year.
When the glossy oval leaves, black dotted beneath, are freshly
put forth in early summer - for the shrub is not strictly an
evergreen, however late the old leaves may cling - it is said
that stupid sheep and calves, which find them irresistibly
attractive, stagger about from their poisonous effect just as
they do after feeding on this shrub's relative the Lambkill
(q.v.). In sandy soil from southern New England to Florida,
rarely far inland, one finds the staggerbush in bloom from May to
July. On the dry plains of Long Island, where it is common
indeed, it appears a not unworthy relative of the FETTERBUSH
(Pieris fioribunda), that exquisite little evergreen with
quantities of small white urns drooping along its twigs, which
nurserymen acquire from the mountains of our Southern States to
adorn garden shrubbery at home and abroad. Mr. William Robinson,
in his delightful book, "The English Flower Garden" (a book, by
the way, that Rudyard Kipling reads as the Puritan read his
Bible), counts this fetterbush among the "indispensables."
Much taller than the preceding dwarfs is the COMMON PRIVET
ANDROMEDA found in swamps and low ground from New England to the
Gulf and in the southwest (Xolisma ligustrina). Whoever has seen
the privet almost universally grown in hedges is familiar with
the general aspect of this much-branched shrub. Most farmers'
boys know the Andromeda's mock May-apple, a hollow, stringy
growth of insect origin, which they are not likely to confuse
with the pulpy, juicy apple found on the closely related azaleas
(q.v.). Abundant terminal spike-like or branched clusters of
white, globular, four or five parted flowers in close array,
attract quantities of bees from the end of May to early July,
notwithstanding each individual flower measures barely an eighth
of an inch across. We have seen the fine hair-triggers which
other members of this same family, the beautiful pink laurels
(q.v.), have set to be sprung by an incoming visitor. Now this
Andromeda, and similarly several of its immediate kin, have a
quite different, but equally effective, method of throwing pollen
on its friends who come to call. When one of the little banded
bees clings, as he must, to the tiny flower scarce half his size,
thrusting his tongue obliquely through the globe's narrow opening
to reach the nectar, suddenly a shower of pollen is inhospitably
thrown upon him from within. In probing between the ring of
anthers (that are pressed against the style by the S-shaped
curvature of the filaments so as to retain the pollen), he needs
must displace some of them and release the vitalizing dust
through the large terminal pores in the anther-sacs. Is he
discouraged by such rough treatment? Not at all. Off he flies to
another Andromeda blossom, and leaves some of the dust with which
he is powdered on the sticky stigma that impedes his entrance,
before precipitating a fresh shower as he sips another reward.
The straight column-like pistil, stigmatic on its tip only,
allows the flower's own pollen to slide harmlessly down its
sides. How exquisite are the most minute adjustments of floral
mechanism! Is it possible for one to remain an agnostic after the
evidences even the flowers show us of infinite wisdom and love?
Another denizen of swamps and low ground, next of kin to the
trailing arbutus, is the LEATHERLEAF, or DWARF CASSANDRA
(Chamaedaphne calyculata), a modest little shrub, its stiff,
slender branches plentifully set with thick oblong leaves that
grow gradually smaller the higher they go, and when young are
densely covered with minute scurfy scales. Sometimes before the
snow has melted in April, the leafy terminal shoots are hung with
multitudes of little waxy-white, cylindric, typical heath flowers
only about a quarter of an inch long, each nodding from a leaf
axil, and the whole forming one-sided racemes. But as the shrub
ranges from Newfoundland to Georgia, and westward to Illinois,
British Columbia, and Alaska, some people find it blooming even
in July.
Mythological names were evidently in high favor among the
botanists who labeled the genuses comprising the heath family:
Phyllodoce, the sea-nymph; Cassiope, mother of Andromeda;
Leucothoe; Andromeda herself; Pieris, a name sometimes applied to
the Muses from their supposed abode at Pieria, Thessaly; and
Cassandra, daughter of Priam, the prophetess who was shut up in a
mad-house because she prophesied the ruin of Troy - these names
are as familiar to the student of this group of shrubs today as
they were to the devout Greeks in the brave days of old.
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