Flowers - Very fragrant, white, in a spike; 6 to 20, nodding from an erect, bracted scape 6 to 20 in. high. Calyx 5-parted corolla, over 1/2 in. across, of 5 concave, obtuse petals 10 stamens, protruding pistil, style curved, stigma 5-lobed. Leaves: All spreading from the base by margined petioles; shining leathery green, round or broadly oval, obtuse, 1 1/2 to 3 in. long, persistent through the winter. Preferred Habitat - Open woods. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, west to Ohio and Minnesota. Deliciously fragrant little flowers, nodding from an erect, slender stalk, when seen at a distance are often mistaken for lilies-of-the-valley growing wild. But closer inspection of the rounded, pearlike leaves in a cluster from the running root, and the concave, not bell-shaped, white, waxen blossoms, with the pistil protruding and curved, indicate the commonest of the pyrolas. Some of its kin dwell in bogs and wet places, but this plant and the shin-leaf carpet drier woodland where dwarf cornels, partridge vines, pipsissewa, and goldthread weave their charming patterns too. Certain of the lovely pyrola clan, whose blossoms range from greenish white, flesh-color, and pink to deep purplish rose, have so many features in common they were once counted mere varieties of this round-leaved wintergreen - an easygoing classification broken up by later-day systematists, who now rank the varieties as distinct species. It will be noticed that all these flowers have their anthers erect in the bud but reversed at flowering time, each of the two sacs opening by a pore which, in reality, is at the base of the sac, though by reversion it appears to be at the top. 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. It is usually found, in company with a few or many of its fellows, in rich woodlands so far west as the Rocky Mountains, blooming from June to August, according to the climate of its wide range.