The plants of New England which are most nearly allied to the heath are
the different species of Andromeda. These plants vary in height from one
foot to seven or eight feet. They resemble the whortleberry in their
general appearance, and in their leaves and flowers, but their fruit is
a dry capsule, not a berry, and their foliage is not tinted in the
autumn. They are, I believe, without an English name. Several species
are indigenous in New England, but only two or three of them are common.
One of the most beautiful, though extremely rare, is the Water
Andromeda, which is found near the edges of ponds. This is the species
which suggested to Linnæus the name given by him to the genus. He
describes it in his “Tour of Lapland” as “decorating the marshy grounds
in a most agreeable manner. The flowers are quite blood-red before they
expand; but when full-grown the corolla is of a flesh-color. Scarcely
any painter’s art can so happily imitate the beauty of a fine female
complexion; still less could any artificial color upon the face itself
bear a comparison with this lovely blossom.” He thought of Andromeda as
described by the poets, and traced a fancied resemblance between the
virgin and the plant, to which it seemed to him her name might be
appropriately given.
One of the most common of our small water shrubs, very homely when
viewed from a distance, but neat and elegant under close inspection, is
the Dwarf Andromeda. It covers in some parts of the country wide tracts
of swampy land, after the manner of the heath, and is not very unlike it
in botanical characters, with its slender branches and myrtle-like
foliage. It opens its flowers very early in spring, arranged in a long
row, like those of the great Solomon’s-seal, extending almost from the
roots to the extremities of the branches. The flowers all lean one way,
each flower proceeding from the axil of a small leaf. Though an
evergreen, the verdure of its foliage is so dull and rusty that it is
hardly distinguished in the meadows which are occupied by it.
Another remarkable species is the panicled Andromeda, a tall and very
common shrub in Eastern Massachusetts, distinguished from the
whortleberry by its large compound clusters of densely crowded white
flowers of a nearly globular shape. These flowers are much neater and
more beautiful on examination than those of the blueberry, and resemble
clusters of white beads. They are succeeded by a dry capsular fruit,
bearing a superficial resemblance to white peppercorns. The fishermen of
our coast have always employed the branches of this shrub, with those of
the clethra, on account of their firmness and durability, as coverings
to the “flakes” which are used for the spreading and drying of codfish.
These two shrubs were formerly distinguished by them as the “black and
the white pepper-bush,” one having berries of a lighter color than the
other.
[Illustration: MAYFLOWER.]
[Illustration: BRANCH OF THE RED ROSE.]