[Illustration]
Fairy Bells are graceful plants, growing in rich, moist, mountain
woods, with smoothish, or slightly hairy, branching stems, leafy above
and with scaly bracts below, springing from slender root-stocks; leaves
netted-veined, alternate, without leaf-stalks, smooth and thin in
texture and often clasping the stem; rather small, bell-shaped flowers,
hanging from under the leaves, with six stamens and a slender style,
with one or three stigmas; the fruit a yellow or red berry. _Disporum_
is from the Greek meaning "double-seed," as in some kinds there are two
seeds in each cell of the ovary.
[Sidenote: =Fairy Bells
Drops of Gold=
_Dísporum trachycàrpum (Prosartes)_
=Yellowish-white
Spring, summer
West=]
A very attractive mountain plant, growing near streams. It is from
nine to twenty-four inches tall, with an angled stem, pale green above
and reddish below. The delicate flowers, about half an inch long,
with a three-lobed green stigma and yellow anthers, grow singly or in
clusters of two or three, nodding shyly under the pretty leaves, which
are dull above and very shiny on the under side, with oddly crumpled
edges and set obliquely on the stem. The berry when unripe is orange
color and suggested the name Drops of Gold, but becomes bright red
when it matures in June. _D. Hookeri_ is similar, but the style is not
three-lobed and the leaves are slightly rough to the touch and are not
so thin or crumpled. They spread out so flat that they make a green
roof over the flowers, completely screening them from the passer-by.
This grows in shady woods, but not near streams.
[Illustration: Fairy Bells--Disporum trachycarpum.