[Sidenote: =Pine-drops=
_Pteróspora Andromedèa_
=White
Summer
Across the continent=]
The only kind, found only in North America, a strange plant, harmonious
in color, with a fleshy, brownish or reddish stem, from one to four
feet tall, with yellowish bracts and covered with sticky hairs,
springing from a mass of matted, fibrous, astringent roots. The flowers
are a quarter of an inch long, with pink pedicels, brownish bracts,
a brownish-pink calyx, with five lobes, and an ivory-white corolla,
with five teeth; the stamens ten, net protruding; the style short,
with a five-lobed stigma; the capsule roundish, five-lobed, with many
winged seeds. We often find dead insects stuck to the stem. In winter,
the dry, dark red stalks, ornamented with pretty seed-vessels, are
attractive in the woods. This usually grows among pine trees, across
the continent, but nowhere common. The Greek name means "wing-seeded."
It is also called Giant Bird's-nest and Albany Beech-drops. _Allótropa
virgàta_, of the Northwest, is similar, but smaller, with five,
roundish sepals and no corolla.
[Sidenote:= Flowering-fungus=
_Pleuricóspora fimbriolàta_
=Flesh-color
Summer
California=]
There are two kinds of Pleuricospora; this is from three to eight
inches tall, with flowers half an inch long, deliciously fragrant,
with four or five, scale-like, fringed sepals, four or five, separate,
fringed petals, resembling the sepals, and eight or ten stamens. The
ovary is egg shaped, one-celled, with a thick style and flattish
stigma, and the fruit is a watery berry. If the waxy, flesh-colored
flowers were set off by proper green leaves they would be exceedingly
pretty, but they are crowded on a fleshy stem, of the same color as
themselves, mixed with fringed bracts, with brownish scales instead
of leaves, and have an unnatural appearance. I found thirty of these
curious plants, growing in a little company, pushing their way up
through the mold and pine-needles, in the Wawona woods.
[Illustration: Flowering-fungus--Pleuricospora fimbriolata.