Among the lilies, which it outwardly resembles very little, is the false Solomon's seal. In this plant the flowers are built according to the prescribed lily plan of six three sepals and three petals, which combine to make six petal like parts. There are six stamens; and the end of the pistil is three parted. The seed has three cavities. The leaves are simple, tapering, clasping the stem, and they have long veins paralleling each other the length of the leaf.

Smilacina stellata (L.) Desf.

May. Sandy woods.

False Solomon's seal has none of the appearance of the true Solomon's seal. Although both are lilies, they arc in different genera, and the Smilacinas arc flowers with terminal spikes of small white flowers with protruding stamens.

False Solomon's seal is a plain of the sand country, of the sand} woods where the bittersweet twines and the black oak- grow. Here on a sloping bank the colony of false Solomon's seal plants stand almost ereet and stiff in the spring sunshine and produce their small clusters of white flowers abundantly through the woods. In the shelter of those arching stems a white-throated sparrow may pipe beneath the stalks and take a bath in the sand. Early insects come to sip nectar at the slightly fragrant flowers, and the entire enactment of spring in the black oak woods takes place now in early May around the false Solomon's seal colony.