Only a delightfully imaginative optimist like Linnaeus could feel
the enthusiasm he expended on this dwarf shrub, with its little,
white, heath-like flowers, which most of us consider rather
insignificant, if the truth be told. But then the blossoms he
found in Lapland must have been much pinker than any seen in
American swamps, since they reminded him of "a fine female
complexion."
"This plant is always fixed on some little turfy hillock in the
midst of the swamps," he wrote, "just as Andromeda herself was
chained to a rock in the sea, which bathed her feet as the fresh
water does the roots of this plant.... As the distressed virgin
cast down her blushing face through excessive affliction, so does
this rosy-colored flower hang its head, growing paler and paler
till it withers away." Under the old go-as-you-please method of
applying scientific names, most of this shrub's relatives shared
with it the name of the fair maid whom Perseus rescued from the
dragons.
The beautiful, low-growing STAGGERBUSH (Pieris Mariana) has its
small, cylindric, five-parted, white or pink-tinted flowers
clustered at intervals along one side of the upright, nearly
leafless, smooth, dark-dotted branches of the preceding year.
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