[Sidenote: =Western Wintergreen=
_Gaulthèria ovatifòlia_
=White
Summer
Northwest=]
A pretty little shrub, growing in mountain woods, a few inches high,
with woody stems, spreading on the ground, and glossy foliage, almost
hiding the flowers. The twigs are fuzzy and the leaves are dark
rich-green, the small flowers white and the berries red.
[Sidenote: =Salal, Shallon=
_Gaulthèria Shállon_
=White, pink
Spring, summer
Northwest=]
An attractive little shrub, usually from one to three feet high, with
handsome foliage. The leaves are finely toothed, dark olive-green,
leathery and rather glossy, pale on the under side, and the waxy
flowers hang gracefully on a stiffly bending flower-stem, which is
sticky and hairy and often bright red, with large, scaly, red bracts
at the base of the pedicels and smaller bracts halfway up. The flowers
are nearly half an inch long, with a yellowish calyx, covered with
reddish hairs, and a white corolla, tipped with pink, or all pink; the
filaments hairy, with orange anthers. There is often so much bright
pinkish-red about the flower-stems and bracts that the effect, with the
waxy flowers and dark foliage, is very pretty. This plant often grows
in great quantities, thickly covering the floor of the redwood forests.
It is called Salál by the Oregon Indians, who value the black, aromatic
berries as an important article of food.
There are many kinds of Azalea, of North America and Asia, mostly tall,
branching shrubs; leaves alternate, thin, deciduous; flowers large, in
terminal clusters, developing from cone-like, scaly buds; calyx small,
five-parted; corolla funnel-form, five-lobed or somewhat two-lipped;
stamens five, rarely ten, protruding, usually drooping; style long,
slender, drooping; capsule more or less oblong.
[Sidenote: =Western Azalea=
_Azàlea occidentàlis (Rhododendron)_
=White
Summer
Cal., Oreg.=]
One of the most beautiful western shrubs, from two to ten feet high,
loosely branching, with splendid clusters of flowers and rich-green
leaves, almost smooth, from one to four inches long, with a small,
sharp tip and clustered at the ends of the twigs. The corolla is from
one and a half to three inches long, slightly irregular, white with a
broad stripe of warm-yellow on the upper petal and often all the petals
striped with pink. The western woodland streams are bordered with
these wonderful blossoms, leaning over the water and filling the air
with their delicious fragrance.
[Illustration: Western Azalea--Azalea occidentalis.]
[Illustration: Salal--G. Shallon.