Montane, subalpine. Boggy woodlands, meadows, and streambanks. Summer.
Haviland Lake Trail, July 1, 2005.

These lovely Pyrolas can be obscured by grasses in boggy meadows (as in this photograph) or be very obvious at the side of the trail in moist open forests (bottom photograph).  Pyrola rotundifolia grows to 15 inches tall and spreads in large colonies.  It is usually the large, shiny green, thick mat of  leaves that first catches our attention.

Because of the resemblance of the basal leaves of this genus to the leaves of a Pear Tree, Linnaeus gave it the name "Pyrola", a diminutive of "Pyrus", the Pear Tree.  The species, P. rotundifolia was first named Pyrola asarifolia by Andre Michaux in 1803 from a specimen he collected in North America. William Jackson Hooker renamed the plant P. rotundifolia variety asarifolia in his 1834 Flora Boreali-Ameiricana.

Montane, subalpine. Boggy woodlands, meadows, and streambanks. Summer.
Winter Trail, July 9, 2009, Haviland Lake Trail, July 1, 2005, and Woods Lake Trail, July 21, 2009.

Montane, subalpine. Boggy woodlands, meadows, and streambanks. Summer.
Ice Lakes Trail, September 2, 2005.

Pyrola rotundifolia seed pods are lovely works of art in themselves.  Leaves stay lustrous green late in the season when seed pods develop their Elephant trunks (the styles) and then the styles fall away and green, furrowed seeds swell.