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From its green arbors the quails may be roused in midwinter, when they resort thither to find the still sound berries of the Mitchella and the Wintergreen. Nature, indeed, seems to have designed this tree to protect the animal creation, both in summer and winter, and I am persuaded that she has not conferred upon them a more beneficent gift.
At the old farm we called the vivid green creeping vine that bears those coral-red berries in November, "partridge berry," because partridge feed on the berries and dig them from under the snow. Botanists, however, call the vine Mitchella repens. In our tramps through the woods we boys never gave it more than a passing glance, for the berries are not good to eat.
From its green arbors the quails are often roused in midwinter, where they feed upon the berries of the Mitchella and the spicy wintergreen. Nature, indeed, seems to have specially designed this tree to protect her living creatures both in summer and in winter." "Hurrah for the white pine," said Malcolm, with great energy, "the grand old American tree!"
They hoped to get enough mitchella at the "open" to fill fifteen jars, and so took two bushel baskets. Four or five inches of hard-frozen snow was on the ground; but in the shelter of the young pine and fir thickets that were now encroaching on the borders of the "open" the "cradle knolls" were partly bare. However, they found less mitchella at Dunham's open than they had hoped.
On one visit they gathered a basketful of mitchella, and when Lucia went home to Portland for Thanksgiving, she carried a small boxful of the vines and berries to her mother. Mrs. Scribner was an artist of some ability, and she made several little sketches of the vine on whitewood paper cutters as gifts to her friends.
The girls, however, thought that the vine was very pretty. Every fall Theodora and Ellen, with Kate Edwards, and sometimes the Wilbur girls, went into the woods to gather lion's-paw and mitchella with which to decorate the old farmhouse at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Many a woman brought here her heavy over-charged heart and was eased in its fire-lighted atmosphere of welcome. Many a child brought hither its spring offering of the first mitchella, or its autumn gift of checkerberries. Many a girl, many a boy had met here to rehearse a Christmas glee or an Easter anthem.
Monotropas, uniting some of the habits of the Fungi with the botanical characters of the flowering plants, flourish side by side with the snowy Cypripedium and the singular Coral-Weed. The evergreen Dewberry, a delicate species of Rubus, trails its glossy leaves over the turfs, and mingles its beaded fruit with the scarlet berries of the Mitchella.
It was "trimmed in the piece"; and that was precisely what Leslie had said when she chose it. She "dodged" a great deal in the mere buying. Leslie and Ruth got together in the wood-hollow, where the little vines and ferns began. Leslie was quick to spy the bits of creeping Mitchella, and the wee feathery fronds that hid away their miniature grace under the feet of their taller sisters.
This member of the Compositae family is a much-branched shrub, with grayish lanceolate foliage, and clusters of flowers about 6 inches in diameter, and of a bluish or mauve colour. It is a native of Nepaul, and, with the protection of a wall, perfectly hardy around London. MITCHELLA REPENS. Partridge Berry. North America, 1761.
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