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To these pores small bees
and flies fasten their short lips to feed on pollen, some of
which will be necessarily .jarred out on them as they struggle
for a foothold on the stamens, and will be carried by them to
another flower's protruding stigma, which impedes their entrance
purposely to receive the imported pollen.
By reason of the old custom of clapping on a so-called
"shinplaster" to every bruise, regardless of its location on the
human body, a lovely little plant, whose leaves were once counted
a first aid to the injured, still suffers instead under an
unlovely name. The SHIN-LEAF (P. elliptica) sends up a naked
flower-stalk, scaly at the base, often with a bract midway, and
bearing at the top from seven to fifteen very fragrant, nodding,
waxen, greenish-white blossoms, similar to the round-leaved
wintergreen's. But on the thinner, dull, dark-green, upright
leaves, with slight wavy indentations, scarcely to be called
teeth, on the margins, their shorter leaf-stalks often reddish,
one chiefly depends to name this common plant.


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