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White Baneberry

Actaea alba. Crowfoot Family.

Stem.--About two feet high. Leaves.--Twice or thrice-compound; leaflets incised and sharply toothed. Flowers.--Small; white; in a thick, oblong, terminal raceme. Calyx.--Of four to five tiny sepals which fall as the flower expands. Corolla.--Of four to ten small flat petals with slender claws. Stamens.--Numerous, with slender white filaments. Pistil.--One, with a depressed, two-lobed stigma. Fruit.--An oval white berry, with a dark spot, on a thick red stalk, growing in a cluster which is sometimes a very conspicuous feature of the woods of midsummer.

The feathery clusters of the white baneberry may be gathered when we go to the woods for the columbine, the wild ginger, the Jack-in-the-pulpit, and Solomon's seal. These flowers are very nearly contemporaneous and seek the same cool shaded nooks, all often being found within a few feet of one another.

The red baneberry, A. rubra, is a somewhat more northern plant and usually blossoms a week or two earlier. Its cherry-red (occasionally white) berries on their slender stalks are easily distinguished from the white ones of A. alba, which look strikingly like the china eyes that small children occasionally manage to gouge from their dolls' heads.