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ALBERT R. MANN
LIBRARY

AT

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

THE GIFT OF

Colonel John D. Payne

Cornell University Library
QK 495.064G45

i

Cornell University

Library

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924000479018

Cencum on

anther sac

I

Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 4. Stamens as they appear in a regular flower. Figs. 5 and 6. The manner in
which stamens may grow to the style. Figs. 7 and 8. Type of an orchid blossom showing the various parts.
Figs. 9, 10, 11,12 and 13. Various types of reproductive organs in the orchids, showing the consolidation of

the anther and pistil on the stalk called the column.

OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

A SERIES OF DRAWINGS FROM NATURE
OF ALL THE SPECIES FOUND IN THE
NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES

BY

WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON

With descriptive text elaborated from
the author’s notes, by

HELENA LEEMING JELLIFFE

NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1905

Copyright, 1905, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
Published, June, 1905

All rights reserved,
including that of translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian.

CONTENTS

PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
ILLUSTRATED KEY TO THE GENERA OF ORCHIDS
I. CypRIPEDIUM
II. Orcuis . 5 ‘ : ‘i °
III. HaBEnaRIa
IV. Poconta ‘ ‘ ‘ 2
V. ARETHUSA j : 2 e i .
VI. EPprpactis ; ‘ : :
VII. GyrRosTAcHys F .
VIII. ListEra
IX. PERAMIUM 3 ‘ 7 a - ‘
X. ACHROANTHES

XI. LrprorcHIs

XII. Carypso
XIII. CoRALLORHIZA , . ‘ * ~
XIV. TIPpUuLARIA 7 > : ‘

XV. LimoporuM

XVI. HEXALECTRIS ‘ ; r
XVII. APLECTRUM : ‘ é : F
INDEX ‘ . ‘ 7

103

120
125
130
133
145
147
150
ISI

155

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

. Characteristic Organs of the Orchid

. Type of the Genus Cypripedium

. Ram’s Head Lady’s-Slipper

. Pink Lady’s-Slipper

. Showy Lady’s-Slipper

. Small White Lady’s-Slipper .

. Small, and Large, Yellow Lady’s-Slipper :
. Blossom of Small, and Large, Yellow Lady’s-Slipper
. Showy Orchis

. Showy Orchis .

. Small Round-leaved Orchis

. Type of Habenaria Blossoms .

. Large Round-leaved Orchis

. Hooker’s Orchis.

. Small Northern Bog Orchis

. Southern Small White, and Yellow, Orchis
. Tall Leafy Green Orchis; Tall White Bog Orchis .
. Tall White Bog Orchis .

. Long-bracted Orchids

. Small Green Wood Orchis
. Tubercled Orchis

Crested Yellow Orchis

. Yellow Fringed Orchis .

. Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS—Continued

FACING PAGE

PLATE

XXIV.
NN
AXAVI.
XXVILI.
NAVIIL.
XXTX.
XXX.
XXAT.
XXXII.
XXXITI.

XXXIV.

XXXV.
XXXVI.
XXXVII.
XXXVIII.
XXXIX,
XL.

XLI.

XLII.
XLII.
XLIV.
XLY.
XLVI.
. Adder’s-mouth

White Fringed Orchis
Blossoms of Fringed Orchis
Smaller Purple Fringed Orchis .
Fringeless Purple Orchis
Blossoms of Rose Pogonia
Rose Pogonia

Nodding Pogonia

Spreading Pogonia

Whorled Pogonia

Smaller Whorled Pogonia

-Arethusa

Helleborine

Gyrostachys

Hooded Lady’s-Tresses

Wide-leaved Lady’s-Tresses

Nodding Lady’s-Tresses

Grass-leaved Lady’s-Tresses

Slender Lady’s-Tresses; Little Lady’s-Tresses
Typical Flower of the Genus Listera
Broad-lipped, Heart-leaved, and Southern Twayblade
Rattlesnake Plantain

Lesser Rattlesnake Plantain

Downy Rattlesnake Plantain

. Large Twayblade
. Loesel’s Twayblade

Calypso

. Corallorhiza

56
57
60
61
64
65

102

106

IIt

122

126

130

131

PLATE

LIT.
LIII.
LIV.
LV.
LVI.
LVII.
LVIII.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS—Continued

FACING PAGE

Early Coralroot; Large Coralroot . : . . « 338
Wister’s Coralroot; Small-fiowered Coralroot . : » 139
Blossoms of Coralroot . : , ‘ 3 ‘ - 144
Tipularia or Crane-fly Orchis . : F * ‘ » 145
Limodorum or Calopogon : ‘ ; ‘ - 146
Hexalectris or Crested Coralroot . : ‘ - 147

Aplectrum (Adam-and-Eve or Puttyroot) . : - 150

PREFACE

THERE are not many subjects in the realm of the classi-
fed natural sciences which one is forced to study at first
hand. Our libraries have led us to enjoy a comfortable
sense of non-observing ease. When our attention has been
aroused by some science, and we have felt that mental
turning of the key that means the opening of a new door
of interest, our first impulse has been to go with the con-
fidence and assurance born of past experience in matters
literary and scientific to a good library, and announce that
we want to see all the books bearing on our newly discovered
interest.

When Mr. Gibson first published his article, and later
his book, on Edible Mushrooms, the libraries were over-
run with students fired with a new ardour by the delightful
glimpse into the world of fungi. Some browsed through
the stacks. Some sent to Agricultural Departments of their
various states for stray illustrated monographs; some
saved their money and bought incomprehensible technical
works on European fungi, but all met with the same ex-
perience. It was impossible to find any book that told
all about all the mushrooms that one could find in a day’s
walk. The result was that the unsatisfied interest forced
people to observe. Mycological clubs became the fad; and

xi

xii PREFACE

the reports at the meetings were all on original observations.
Within two or three years a number of popular books, as
well as a number of scientific books written in English not
too technical were published, and now any child may have
its private library on mushrooms.

When Mr. Gibson’s article, “A Few Native Orchids,”
was published shortly before his death, the libraries again
had an influx of visitors all asking for “everything on orchids,”
but they had nothing to offer except Henry Baldwin’s
popular monograph on “The Orchids of New England,”
published some twenty years ago. To the mind prepared
by much school training for observing birds, and flowers,
and trees, this running account of the orchids as they
appeared in successive seasons did not give a sufficiently
simple method of determining the orchids as one finds them
here and there.

This scarcity of books on the subject of our native
orchids is due to the fact that no one has yet observed more
than a few of them. When Darwin published his work on
the cross-fertilisation of orchids, Asa Gray, his American
contemporary, made many observations confirming Darwin’s.
Other botanists loved the orchids, and described their
habitat and even wrote poems about them; but no one has
yet done for all our native orchids what William Hamilton
Gibson started to do.

He had collected and sketched nearly all of the North
American species that he could find east of the Mississippi
and north of the Carolinas, and had received many from

PREFACE xill

friends. Then he settled down patiently to watch by night
these curiously constructed flowers that are so marvellously
adapted to some particular insect visitor. His written
observations were only begun at the time of his death, but
his data for observation were ready to be given to his readers.
On opening his orchid portfolio, there appear finished
studies of the queenly orchids of our Northern woods,
delicate pen-and-ink pictures full of the artist’s perception
of grace in the grotesque, of the inconspicuous low green
orchids, and pencil notes of the greatest accuracy, revealing
the mechanism by which the pollen masses were clapped
on the head of the eager insect that pushed through the
alluring petals to get his honey. It was his desire that
others should have the dear delight of walking the fields
with seeing eyes, and the woods with understanding; and to
that end he had completed the drawings of nearly all our sixty
or more native orchids with a hint at the meaning of each,
when his work was stopped with the text still unwritten.
But the pictures are the orchids themselves, and with
his open portfolio, the flower lover may learn to know them,
not merely in the snobbish way in which the social aspirant
delights to be able to bow to some one whom he knows
merely by name, but with that intimate personal love that
lasts through seasons’ changes, from the spring awakening
out of the brown earth to the quick or tardy bursting forth
of the blossom, be it gorgeous and tall, or low and queer and
ugly, through its hours of unfolding maturity, when it woos

with fringe and flame and nectar its insect visitor, until, its

xIV PREFACE

effort fulfilled, its life question answered, it stands old and
stricken in days, silently scattering its seed for the year to
come.

The text to accompany the illustrations has been plainly
set forth in simple English from Mr. Gibson’s notes, from
the undescriptive statistics of manuals of botany and from
an intimate acquaintance with the wild orchids themselves.
It is hoped that others may make the observations on their
insect visitors that he had prepared himself to make. The
orchids should no longer be a mere Latin-named family of
plants to squeeze to death in a press and to mount in withered
array in a herbarium, but a group of individuals living in a
social relation to the insect world and worthy of the most
intimate acquaintance and observation.

To older botanists who are accustomed to call the Rattle-
snake Plantain “Goodyera,”’ and the Lady’s-Tresses:
“Spiranthes,” it may seem like an innovation to use the
names Peramium and Gyrostachys. But the latter, as well
as all the scientific names here appended to the popular
titles, are the old, true names.

Botanists in Europe decided in 1867, at the Paris Botani-
cal Congress, to let the original name of the genus stand.
The date to which they decided to go back was the year of
the publication of Linnzus’s “Genera Plantarum,” 1753.
Since that date there had arisen great confusion by giving
new names in America as well as all over the world to plants
that were already known in Europe, or by making a new
genus out of some species that should have been put in a

PREFACE XV

well-established genus. It had come to pass that some
plants had from ten to twenty different names, and again
several plants had the same name.

It was decided in 1892, at the Botanical Club of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in
Rochester, N, Y., to adopt the code of nomenclature devised
by the Paris Botanical Congress and return to the oldest
established name for each plant.

The botanical manuals of Gray and Wood naturally
contained many names which did not comply with this
regulation. It was not until the “Illustrated Flora of the
Northern States and Canada,” by Britton and Brown, was
published in 1896 that the painstaking task was accom-
plished of revising the names of the 4,000 plants included
in this flora. Some of the orchids are among those whose
scientific names sound unfamiliar. But the orchid lovers
who are disturbed by this change from what they learned at
school ten or more years ago may rest assured that the
nomenclature of botany is now as firmly established as that
of zodlogy.

The area covered by these illustrations of Mr. Gibson
extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the 102d meridian, and
includes the whole state of Kansas, and northward from the
parallel of the southern boundary of Virginia and Kentucky
to the northern limits of Labrador and Manitoba.

Thanks are due to Doctor Britton and his associates who
materially aided the completion of Mr. Gibson’s work by
placing all the material of the New York Botanical Garden at

xvl PREFACE

the author’s disposal, also to Miss Emma Wadsworth and
Miss Lucia Hazen, who selected and prepared for repro-
duction the studies that Mr. Gibson had made for his

projected work.

INTRODUCTION

Tue word orchid has a rich, languorous sound to those
who know only the painted blossoms of the florist, poised
above their boxes of aerial roots. The tales of primeval
forests whose branches are aflame with their high-perched,
airy visitors rather lead the novice to fancy that the heart
of some unexplored New Hampshire forest will reveal a
gorgeous galaxy of blossoms, regal with wide, tinted petals,
such as float above the heads of the guests at a princely
entertainment. But the truth is that our Northeastern
American orchids all grow on the ground, are many of them
very plain and inconspicuous, and, although some are
lovely in the spike, the individual flowers are small and
fragile.

But humble as our native orchids may seem compared
with the magnificent specimens of the tropics, and with
those that vie with the Black Tulip in bringing enormous
prices, ours have all the characteristics of this aristocratic
family. The orchids are the nobility of the flower world.
They are a race set apart. No common garb is theirs.
The lilies and the irises, their next of kin, wear blue—but
never orchids. These stand in purple and gold, with all the
shades between the faintest gleam of pearl and the intensest

crimson violet. ‘Such is their number and_ variety,”
XVil

XViil INTRODUCTION

¢

Humboldt tells us, “in the valleys of the Peruvian Andes
that the entire life of a painter would be too short to delineate
all the magnificent forms which adorn those deep recesses.”

Like scions of a noble race, they have a curiously de-
vised heraldry and may be known by their horns and
antlers, tails and ears, and queerly fashioned crests. Like
the lords of feudal days, they are served by many, who
in serving serve themselves; for the insects that fetch and
carry their pollen live on their lord’s bounty in the form
of nectar. To some extent all flowers, as all mankind, live
according to the same law, but in the orchid race the adapta-
tion is finer. Just as there is more ceremony connected
with taking a meal in a baron’s castle than at a farmhouse,
so there is more ceremony about the orchids’ guests. The
goldenrod is swarmed with the common striped bugs and
flies, but the orchids have each their one or few bidden
guests, who come as though specially invited. It is no fox-
and-crane feast, for the misfits and loungers of the insect
world. The moths that come to an orchid from any part
of the world are born to feast from its particular cups.
Their coiled tongues are of exactly the same length as the
spur that holds the nectar, and their heads are adapted to
the space between the pollen sacs.

The social relations of the orchids are, as with man, the
tempting and absorbing topic, and their devices to woo
the insects, like the charms of a heroine of romance, make
us forget that there is a purely domestic and mundane side
of life in the orchid’s world as well as in the human. The

INTRODUCTION XIX

orchids are obliged to take heed as to what they shall eat
and drink as much as to what they shall wear. But like
the aristocracy of society who are supposed to know nothing
of their kitchens and plumbing, the orchids are supposed to
live wholly on air, and never dig into the earth for their food
supply. ‘This is true of more than half of the three thousand
species that inhabit the earth, true of some of those marvel-
lous fantasies of form and colour that perch like brightly
plumaged birds on the high trees of tropical forests. Where
are the alchemists who transform the air and sunshine into
silk-textured petals dyed with the rarest colours? In the
green leaves we find that the chlorophyl grains, those minute
round green pigment cells, that colour the leaves, are the
analytical chemists, that, in the presence of sunlight split
the air and water into their elements and then mix new food
compounds for the plants’ special needs, much as a skilful
cook might make bread or cake or doughnuts by using
the same materials in different proportions.

But how can the orchids, living so far from the ground,
obtain their water? It might appear that they drew it
through the roots that they fasten like talons into the
branches of the trees, but that would make them parasites.
No, the roots get their water from the moisture in the air,
while a few are set aside as grappling hooks to fasten the
orchid securely in place.

When a young orchid sprouts from the seed that has lodged
in a congenial tree top, it sends out a root tip that flattens

itself against the bark, sometimes laying itself along like

ax INTRODUCTION

a strap, from which it sends out tubular cells that might
be called clamp cells. So strongly do they penetrate that
when one pulls the outer flakes of bark will come off, but
the cells will not loose their hold. A few such roots, how-
ever, serve to hold the orchid in place, while the rest, growing
out without touching anything, hang down from the tree
like long threads, or grow freely in the air in tortuous shapes
like ropes. In some orchids regular tassels of such roots
hang down.

Simple as the aerial roots seem, they are more complex
than the roots that plunge in the earth to pursue their food
around stones and through crevices. They are covered by
a white membrane composed of perforated cells that absorb
water like a sponge. As soon as the air becomes moist,
whether from falling rain or humidity, they immediately
imbibe its water, and pass it on to chlorophyl cells that
are imbedded in the centre, and these in turn with the help
of the leaves begin the slow mysterious process of accumu-
lating those chemical treasures that in the fulness of years
will perhaps burst into an orchid blossom.

The terrestrial orchids all grow as other earth-growing
plants do, with roots closely resembling those of the lily
family, sometimes fibrous, sometimes fleshy, sometimes
bulbous. In most cases when one of these high-bred epiph-
etal orchids living on dew and sunshine is brought suddenly
to earth, planted in soil and forced to live the life of its more
mundane neighbours, it dies, but there are instances of a few

aerial species that can adapt themselves to circumstances, and

INTRODUCTION XX1

that will push their roots spontaneously into the soil, cast
off their white porous envelopes and thrive upon the food
obtained direct from Mother Earth.

It was the poet Goethe who in his youthful pursuit of
botany proposed the theory that each circle of the flower,
the pistils, the stamens, the petals and the sepals, were
but modified forms of leaves, which obeyed the great econ-
omic impulse of the universe and had settled down to a scheme
of division of labour.

The florists, reversing the order of nature by giving the
plants unwonted luxuries such as even temperature and
excessive food, have caused them to turn back to their
former states, and we can find them in the double state going
through all the stages of metamorphosis. Roses will show
every. grade from petal to stamen, and occasionally the whole
blossom reverts back to a tuft of green leaves.

If such metamorphoses are possible, it is not hard to see
how the various peculiarly shaped flowers owe their irregular
form to the combination or modification of their stamens
or petals.

“From the simplest and regular type of flowers,” to
quote Mr. Gibson’s own words, “as in the buttercup, we
pass on to more and more involved and unsymmetrical forms,
as the columbine, monk’s-hood, larkspur, aristolochia, and
thus finally to the most highly specialised or involved form
of all, as seen in the orchid; the multifarious, multiversant
orchid; the beautiful orchid, the ugly orchid; the fragrant

orchid, the graceful, homely, grotesque, uncanny, mimetic,

XXil INTRODUCTION

and until the year 1859 the absolutely non- committal
and inexplicable flower; the blossom which had waited
through the ages for Darwin, its chosen interpreter, ere
she yielded her secret to humanity!”

To understand readily the metamorphosed structure of
the orchids it will be helpful to recall the parts of a simple
regular flower as they appear in their concentric circles,
represented in Plate I., Fig. 1. Contrast these with the
elaborately varied petals of the Yellow Fringed Orchis as
seen in Plate I., Figs. 7 and 8. The orchid family is closely
related to the lily and the iris family, and has its parts in
threes; but the three parts of each circle are by no means
symmetrical. Of the outer circle two sepals are alike, but
the third is enlarged, making a hood over the petals. In the
next circle two petals are alike, but the third is much elong-
ated, fringed and beautifully marked. This fringed petal
is called the lip. It may be pouched as in the Lady’s-
Slipper, or covered with bristles, or pinched, or toothed, or
brilliantly coloured, so that it can in some way attract insects
to visit it.

This lip, properly speaking, is the upper petal and would
stand up in the air like a banner, were it not that the ovary,
which in all the lilies and irises is perfectly straight, is, in the
orchid family, with but few exceptions, twisted completely
around. This causes the lip to hang, and permits it to
become larger and more elaborately modified than the other
petals or the sepals.

In the particular orchid in the illustration, Plate I., Figs. 7

INTRODUCTION XXIil

and 8, which is a type of the structure of several genera, the
lip has a slender curved tube hanging from the point where it
joins the ovary. This is called the spur. It is generally filled
with nectar, and as the insect alights on the lip, which serves
as the threshold of the flower, the opening to the spur lies
directly in front of him and under the stamens and
stigma.

As a near relative of the lilies and irises we expect to see
the stamens and pistils separate from one another, arranged
in threes; but in order to concentrate their efforts at the
opening of the flower through which the insect approaches
its heart, the stamens and style have grown together into one
organ called the column. Thus one stalk bears the stigma
and the pollen. We can trace the metamorphosis in Plate I.,
Figs. 5 and 6.

This growing together of the reproductive organs is the
feature that distinguishes the orchids from all other monoco-
tyledons. The pressed together, knobby, almost grotesque
structure with curiously packed pollen grains in the centre
of the flower is the characteristic sign by which the novice
may know that he has found an orchid (Plate I., Figs. 9,
iO, TI, 12y 13).

The structure of the column is various. In some cases,
as in the Lady’s-Slipper, there are three anthers, two
fertile, packed with pollen masses, on either side of the
stigma, and one sterile, like a pointed leaf hanging over the
stigma. In other cases there is but one anther containing

two pollen sacs, one on either side of the stigma. Sometimes

XXIV INTRODUCTION

the column is elongated into a beak that projects over the
stigma. ‘This projection is called the rostellum.

The pollen is never of the dry, dusty sort that blows from
tree to tree, nor is it even the brilliant powdered gold that is
poured forth from the long anther sacs of the lilies. It is
gathered in waxy masses that cohere in lumps or clubs,
called pollinia, and are generally carried away as a whole by
the insect visitors, for with very few exceptions the orchids
are wholly dependent upon insects for their perpetuation
through seed. They possess no possible resource for self
fertilisation if they fail to attract the insects that are especially
adapted to enter their honey-throated blossoms. Hence
this display of stripes and fringes, of brilliant colours, and of
long horns of nectar swung beneath the lip to entice the
useful visitors.

Many common wild flowers that are arranged with
special reference to cross fertilisation, can nevertheless
fertilise themselves if they do not receive pollen from other
plants, and although they do not as a rule set so many or
such heavy seeds as if they had been cross fertilised, yet
they are not threatened with extinction if they have to
depend on their own pollen. The orchids have no such
provision, and would never mature their seeds did they not
receive pollen from neighbouring plants through the medium
of insect visitors.

It was because of this fact that Darwin chose the orchids
as the exponent of his theory of cross fertilisation with
which he astonished the world in 1859.

INTRODUCTION XXV

It seems strange to realise that the facts that are taught
in every school in the country should have been, until
fifty years ago, a mystery for sages to speculate upon.

It took two hundred years to comprehend the truths that
were every day being demonstrated by the flowers of the
field. In 1682 Nehemias Grew announced that the pollen
of a flower must reach the stigma before it could be fer-
tilised (Plate I., Fig. 2). Linnzeus settled the arguments
which for fifty years waxed hot over the subject, by proving
that it was the pollen that really set the seed of a flower.
Thus the functions of the stamens and pistils were satis-
factorily disposed of; but nothing was settled concerning the
honey, the perfume and the colour of the flower. It was
considered quite sufficient to consider that the Creator had
made them for the delight of man.

But certain curious spirits speculated on the matter, until
the day when Sprengel discovered his great half truth.
He found that some flowers were so arranged that the pollen
could not possibly fall upon the stigma of the same blossom.
In some cases the stamens were much shorter than the
stigma, as in Plate I., Fig. 3. Therefore he concluded that
the insects that were continually crawling in and out of the
blossoms made up to the plant for what seemed to him a
natural defect in structure, by transferring the pollen to the
stigma of the same flower. It never occurred to him that
there was a divine and beneficent reason for preventing the
pollen from falling on the stigma of its own flower. The
point he tried to prove was everywhere disproved by the

XXV1 INTRODUCTION

flowers themselves. In some cases the anthers were ripe
and shedding their pollen (Plate I., Fig. 3) long before the
stigma was open to receive it, and by the time the stigma
had opened the anthers were withered (Plate I., Fig. 4).
Of what use could an insect be to transfer the pollen from ripe
stamens to a hard green stigma? And of what avail was its
presence in a flower where the stigma was freshly prepared
to receive pollen but where the anther sacs were empty?
All that Sprengel’s idea lacked was “‘wings’’; the insects did
brush the pollen from the anthers, but they had to fly to
another flower of the same species to find a welcome for it.
Thus Sprengel’s great work lay unnoticed till Darwin, on
reading it nearly one hundred years later, divined the whole
truth, namely, that the reason many flowers were so con-
structed that they could not fertilise themselves was because
they could be better fertilised by pollen from other blossoms
of their kind. That insects played an important réle in the
transference of this pollen was evident.

When Darwin in his “Origin of Species”’ stated that no
higher plant could fertilise itself for a perpetuity of generations
without a cross with some other individual, he called up on
himself a shower of blame and abuse for propounding such a
doctrine without giving ample facts; for the botanical world
at large held the opinion that when the stamens were so
admirably set around the stigma it would be a waste of good
logic to argue that the pollen did not fertilise its own flower.
Had not Sprengel showed that the insect, attracted by
markings and spots, perfume and honey, brushed the pollen

INTRODUCTION XXVil

off anthers that did not happen to be conveniently placed
in relation to the stigma? If there were some exceptions,
as when anthers shed their pollen before the stigma was
ready to receive it, or the stigma matured before the pollen,
were not these “divine mysteries’?

To prove his theory of cross fertilisation Darwin chose
the orchids as his witnesses, the native orchids of England,
which are much like those of our own woods. He chose them
because they were the “most singular and modified forms
in the vegetable kingdom,” and he expressed the humble
hope that his little work—which is now world famous—
“might lead some observers to look more curiously into the
native species.”

It was with the same hope that Mr. Gibson made his
orchid studies; that an introduction to the individuals of
this queer curious flower folk might lead to an intimate
acquaintance with the marvellous laws that guide their
being.

We can picture the English seer in science, with his sons
and his friends, watching through years the habits of the
orchids, sitting patiently in the garden twilight to surprise
the moths that visited them; counting the blossoms of those
that set seed, where their chosen insects came freely, against
the sterility or feeble fertilisation of those that were doomed
to celibacy by a net or bell glass; catching the bumble-
bees and moths, and examining the pollen masses that stuck
to their eyes and hairs; playing pranks upon the flowers,
by gently inserting a lead pencil or a fine bristle at the

XXVIll INTRODUCTION

opening of the blossom’s throat, and tricking it into yielding
up its treasure; exploring the painted pathway to the nec-
taries, and discovering belated revellers caught drowsing
in their cups, when the blossom “shut up for the night.”
All this our own science artist did in the woods and fields
of Connecticut; and then pictured the orchids whose story
he planned to tell, so that each flower lover might learn to

know them for himself.

ILLUSTRATED KEY TO THE GENERA

OF ORCHIDS

Flowers solitary or several, large and showy.
Lip enlarged into a pouch. Anthers two,
one on each side of column.

é
U

A

Noiadogt

Flowers several, purple and white or rose;
one anther with two diverging anther sacs.
Lip elongated into a spur, pollen masses
prolonged into a stalk with a gland.

Far OEE es
Te ow ww

~

XX1X

I. CypRIPEDIUM P. 3.

II. Orcuis P. 109.

RX ILLUSTRATED KEY

Flowers small, greenish, white, purple or
yellow; mostly in racemes or spikes; lip with

spur at base; anther sacs diverging. TI. HaBENARIA P. 24.

Flowers single or in a loose raceme; leaves
alternate or in a whorl; lip without .a spur;
anther stalked, attached to the back of the
column; anther sacs parallel, poilinia without
any stalk.

IV. Poconta P. 65.

ILLUSTRATED KEY XXX1

Solitary rose-purple flower on a, bracted
stem; lip without sac or spur; column ad-
hering at its base to lip; anther attached to
column with two pollinia in each sac. V. ARETHUSA P. 78.

omer A

anther B

Nowe Stigma

A rare plant with fibrous roots and stout,
leafy stem. Flowers in a leafy bracted
raceme, with sepals and petals all separate

and nearly equal; no spur. Lip pinched in
at the middle. VI. Eprractis Pp. 82.

Slender herbs with close-pressed white or

greenish white flowers arranged in one to

three rows on a stalk that is usually twisted;

leaves all at the base. Lip, without a spur, VII. Gyrostacuys
but spreading, crisped and cut. _ P. 87.

XXXi1 ILLUSTRATED KEY

Small herbs with a pair of green leaves near
the middle; a raceme of stiff little spurless
flowers; sepals and petals nearly all alike,
standing free; lip split or expanded. VII. LisTERA P. 103.

Flowers in bracted spikes, rising from a tuft
of basal leaves, often blotched with white;
lip entire, roundish ovate. TIX. PERAMIUM P. III.

Low herbs from a solid bulb, bearing a

raceme of minute feathery white or green

flowers. One leaf clasping stalk with several X. ACHROANTHES
scales below. Two pollinia in each anther sac. P. 120.

ILLUSTRATED KEY XXXIil

Low herbs from a solid bulb with a pair of

broad, shining leaves at base of flower stalk.

Sepals and petals nearly equal, linear and XI. LEpToRcHIS
Spreading. P. 125:

Bog herb with coralloid roots; single, purple,
pink, and yellow blossom, with a large split,
bearded lip. XII. Carypso Pp. 130.

Root parasites with large coralloid branching

roots. Small, inconspicuous, dull flowers in a

slender raceme. Leaves all reduced to sheath- XIII. CoraLtorwiza
ing scales. Sepals and petals nearly equal. Berea

XXXIV ILLUSTRATED KEY

Slender herbs rising from solid bulbs. Flowers
in a long loose raceme, a single leaf unfolding
after the flowers. Flowers green, nodding,
with spurs twice as long as the flowers.

Several purple pink flowers about one inch
long, lip crested with yellow orange hairs.

XIV. TIevraria
P. 145.

XV. Laroporuu
P. 147.

ILLUSTRATED KEY XXXV

Stout plant; leaves reduced to scales; coralloid
root; large, brownish purple flower, three- XVI. HEXALECTRIS
quarter inch across. P. 150

Herbs from solid corms, sending up one leaf

in autumn. A raceme of nodding, yellow,

brown and purple flowers, with sepals and XVII. APLECTRUM
petals equal, no spur. P. ISI

OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

[
CYPRIPEDIUM
LADY’ S-SLIPPER

THE name Cypripedium comes from «xp, Kypris, a
Greek name of Venus, and pes, pedis. The fancy that the
long toe-like pouch of a transformed petal looked like a
shoe may have led the maids of Athens to call it Venus’s
Slipper, for a yellow lady’s-slipper grows wild in Europe.
The same fancy made the Puritan girls that lived on the
outskirts of the Indian forests call it the moccasin flower.
Our common name of Lady’s-Slipper is the outgrowth of
the religious custom that followed the Revival of Learning,
of making over the personal property of Venus to the Virgin
Mary, “Notre Dame.” So the name Lady’s-Slipper is
merely a contraction of “Slipper of Our Lady.”

From forests on the islands of the sea, from Java, Borneo,
Ceylon and Japan, as well as from India, Mexico and
South America, members of this family are brought to the
hothouses of Europe and America, and burst out into
blossoms of every conceivable shade of purple, crimson,
rose and yellow, white and brown and green, every colour
except blue, which is denied to the orchids.

There are at least forty species in tropical and temperate

3

4 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

climes. Only ten grow in North America, and of the
wonderful group six in our Eastern woods are among the
loveliest of our native orchids. The Cypripedia are so
different from all the other orchids that Darwin thought
that an enormous wave of extinction must have swept away
a multitude of intermediate forms and left this genus, now
widely distributed, as a record of a former and more simple
state of the great orchidean order.

“The single anther,” says Darwin, “which is present in all
other orchids, is rudimentary in Cypripedium, and _ is
represented by a singular shield-like projecting body.” In
the pink Lady’s-Slipper (Plate II.) this lies like a little
shelf (4) just over the stigma (C) and almost closes the
entrance to the insects’ paradise that hangs below.

The two fertile anthers lie just behind and beneath this
shelf and the stigma is on its under side.

The gorgeously petalled and curiously fashioned flower
of a Cypripedium is as unlike the six-parted perianth of the
lily or the iris as the court train of a peeress to the simple
kirtle of the village maid; and yet it is easy to trace the
modifications. There are three outer petals and three
inner petals, but all so highly coloured, so beribboned and
fluted as to make it difficult to distinguish them. The
sepals, however, are the two appendages that stand, the one
like a banner directly over the pouch, and the other, formed
of two that are almost or wholly united into one, directly
under it. Two of the petals are the wings that fly at right
angles to the banner, and the third is the curiously blown

a
uM

Me :

lI. Type or tHe Genus Cypripepium, as SEEN IN THE Pink Lapy’s-SuiprEeR

Fig. 1. The flower. Fig. 2. The stigma and stamens lying under the sterile anther.
Fig. 3. Side view of anther. Fig. 4. Interior of pouched lip.

Fig. 1. Ram’s Head Lady’s-Slipper. Fig. 2. Blossom enlarged. Fig. 3. Upper view
of anthers and stigma. Fig. 4. Under view of anthers and stigma. Fig. 5. Mature

capsule.

CYPRIPEDIUM 5

pouch called the labellum or lip, within which many a
bumblebee finds a sweet tavern. But he does not escape
paying his toll unless he bites or claws or bursts his way
through the painted walls, as many an unmannerly guest
does.

In the illustration (Plate II.) we may see how excellently
this orchid has adapted itself to its insect visitors by a
division of labour. Instead of three or six stamens, all
fashioned alike, as in the lilies and irises, we find a curious
combination of stamens and stigmas that at first appear
contorted and squeezed together, but that are most cunningly
adapted to divide the labour. One stamen is sterile (4),
but far from being useless, it is spread out into a triangular
roof that covers the opening to the labellum, so that no
water may drip into the exquisite chamber, and the two
anthers (B), filled with pollen and stigma (C), as seen from
the under surface in Fig. 3, are kept dry.

The pollen that lies in these anthers is a pulpy, powdery
mass, and so sticky that as an insect brushes by the openings
of the anther cells it cannot fail to carry some off with it.
Immediately under this improvised stamen roof le the
three stigmas united into one (C) and covered, not with a
smeary, viscid secretion, but with a comb of teeth that scrapes
the pollen from the back and head of any large insect that
tries to squeeze his way in at the radiantly coloured but low-
eaved portal.

Once he is in (Fig. 4) and has sipped up the secretion
that exudes from the hairs that line the inner surface of the

6 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

labellum, he finds that those pink-veined edges that lured
him in curve hopelessly away from the daylight; but he is
not left in despair, for the hairs inside serve as a guide,
they all point back and up to a pair of narrow side doors,
plainly marked exit, through which he can squeeze. But
woe be to him if he is vain of his velvet coat, for he will
surely smear it with pollen as he crawls past either of those
open anthers. However, he will be rubbed clean by the
stigma that hangs like an inverted door-mat at the entrance
to the next blossom.

The object of the brilliant veins and spots that converge
to the incurved opening of the pouch is to coax the bee to
squeeze under the stigma, thereby brushing it with the
pollen of the last flower he visited. When he is once in he
cannot scramble out any other way than through the small
opening directly under the anthers, so that he must perforce
take pollen with him to the next blossom, and perform, all
unconsciously to himself, the mysterious rites of cross
fertilisation.

Mr. Gibson proved the actual passage of the bumblebee
by a simple experiment, which any one might repeat. He
had observed the torn and bruised lip occasionally perforated
by a hole, and he had long patiently watched in the haunts
of the Cypripedium, awaiting a natural demonstration of its
cross fertilisation.

“At length,” he writes, “in hopelessness of reward by such
means, I determined to see the process by more prosaic

methods. Gathering a cluster of the freshly opened flowers

CYPRIPEDIUM i]

which still retained their pollen, 1 took them to my studio.
I then captured a bumblebee, and forcibly persuaded him to
enact the demonstraticn which I had so long waited for him
peacefully to fulfil. Taking him by the wings, I pushed
him into the fissure by which he is naturally supposed to
enter without persuasion. He was soon within the sac,
and the inflexed wings of the margin had closed above him.
He is now enclosed in a luminous prison, and his buzzing
protests are audible and his vehemence visible from outside
the sac. Let us suppose that he at length has become
reconciled to his condition and has determined rationally
to fulfil the ideal of his environment, as he may perhaps
have already done voluntarily before. The buzzing ceases,
and our bee is now finding sweet solace for his incarceration
in the copious nectar which he finds secreted among the ,
fringy hairs in the upper narrowed portion of the flower.
Having satiated his appetite he concludes to quit his close
quarters. After a few moments of more vehement futile
struggling and buzzing, he at length espies, through the
passage above the nectary fringe, a gleaming light as from
two windows. ‘Toward these he now approaches. As he
advances the passage becomes narrower and narrower,
until at length his back is brought against the overhanging
stigma. So narrow is the pass at this point that the efforts
of the bee are distinctly manifest from the outside in the
distention of the part and the consequent slight change
in the droop of the lip. In another moment he has passed

his ordeal, and his head is seen protruding from the window-

8 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

like opening on one side of the column. But his struggles
are not yet ended, for his egress is still slightly checked
by the narrow dimensions of the opening, and also by the
detention of the anther, which his thorax has now en-
countered. A strange etiquette this of the Cypripedium,
which speeds its parting guest with a sticky plaster smeared
all over its back.”

This genus is the easiest of our American orchids to
name. The pouch, or labellum, is the sign that they belong
to the genus Cypripedium, and their colour indicates the

species to which they belong.

KEY TO THE SPECIES OF CYPRIPEDIUM

a

Greenish, with purple streaks. . Ram’s-head Lady’s-Slipper.
Pink or rose purple. 2. Pink Lady’s-Slipper.

White. 3. Showy Lady’s-Shipper.
4. Small White Lady’s-Slipper.

. Large Yellow Lady’s-Slipper.
. Small Yellow Lady’s-Slipper.

Yellow.

nn

I. RAM’S-HEAD LADY’S-SLIPPER
Cypripedium arietinum, R. Br. (Plate III.)

THE rarest of our native Cypripedium is the tiny Ram’s-
head, Cypripedium arietinum. ‘Through the northern part
of New England, New York and Minnesota it grows shyly
in cold, damp woods or under pines and cedars, blooming
from May until August, according to locality. It is unable

to attract, by reason of its less conspicuous flower, any but

CYPRIPEDIUM 9

those who know the interest of its pedigree. It is a con-
necting link between Cypripedium and other orchids, in
the fact that it has three separate sepals, instead of having
the two under sepals joined in one, giving the characteristic
appearance of only two.

The plant grows from eight to twelve inches in height
and has three or four dark green leaves and one little
fragrant blossom with narrow green-brown petals (Fig. 1).
The lip is an oddly shaped pouch covered with converging
hairs at the mouth and mottled with streaking veins in
reddish purple. When it is held in a certain position the
blunt nose and the curving petals resemble the tiny horned
head of a ram.

It is quite common in the orchids of the tropics and
conservatories to find horns, anthers, antennz, tails, ears
and other adjuncts, “enough,” as one botanist said, “to
give a zoologist the agonies.”” ‘‘The Espiritu Santo seems
a white dove with expanded wings, and the droll Aceras
Anthropophora, dressed like an acrobat in skin-tunic of
green, swings as if gibbeted in company with some fifty
other little felons.’

,

The Ram’s-head Cypripedium is the
only caricature among our native orchids; and so few have
seen it that no one knows much about its domestic life.
The broad, sterile stamen (A) lies over the stigma (C) and
shields the entrance, and the anthers (B) are tucked snugly
into the corners by the exits, as in the other members of the
family, but what insects go in and out and whether they are

abroad by day or night, no one has written.

10 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

2. PINK LADY’ S-SLIPPER, MOCCASIN FLOWER, NOAH’S ARK,
STEMLESS LADY’ S-SLIPPER

Cypripedium acaule, Ait. (Plate IV.)

THE spring is not perfect to the lover of May who does
not find the Pink Lady’s-Slipper. It has a roving fancy and
grows up hill and down dale. In Virginia it climbs to a
height of 4,500 feet. Although it grows chiefly in dry or
moist woods, and seems to prefer places where it can grow
on the long green graves of fallen pines, yet it is often found
in clefts of rocky cliffs and on sunny hillsides and in sandy
soil, and it has been found growing in swamps, pale in colour
but perfectly healthy. It has been found during the first
week in May in our Northern spring. Thoreau has it
down in his journal as due on the 20th. The city-bound
flower lover who escapes to the woods for the first time on
Decoration Day is almost sure to find it in full blossom, and
it often lingers through June. From the thick, fleshy root
spring two large, cool, oval leaves. They are sometimes
eight inches long and one-third as wide. Between them
rises a slender stalk, for it is not the flower but the plant
that is stemless, and on it hangs the crisp pink pouch of this
fragrant blossom of Venus. ‘The inflated lip or labellum
gives the predominating tone, but the other parts are toned
in harmony. The sepals, the single one above, and the two
joined in one beneath, are greenish purple, as also are the
two long tapering petals that spread on either side of the
third which has been so curiously infolded into the purple

Fig. 1. Showy Lady’s-Shipper. Fig. 2. Blossoms about natural size. Fig. 3. Upper and
side view of anthers and stigma.

CYPRIPEDIUM Il

pink pouch threaded with bright crimson veins and lined
on its upper inner surface with long white hairs (Plate II.
and Plate IV). This pouch is often two inches long, making
the largest flower of any of our native orchids.

3. SHOWY LADY’S-SLIPPER
Cypripedium regine, Walt. (Plate V.)

Tue glory of all the Cypripediums, in fact the glory of
the summer swamps of our Northern woods, is the Cypri-
pedium regine. Why call it the Showy Lady’s-Slipper
when it is in truth a queen? It has nothing of the gay and
gaudy effect that the former name spectabile conveys, nor
was its English name album good, for it varies from a deep
pink purple streaked with white to pure white. It is too
regal for a common name, and Cypripedium regine is the
only title worthy of it.

Through the dark shades of our Adirondack forests and
in wet woods from Nova Scotia to Georgia it rises on its
stout leafy stem, fully two feet high, bearing above its
broad-ribbed leaves one or two, and sometimes three or
even four lovely blossoms.

In some parts of Maine there are whole swamps where
one may wade through the stately plants up to one’s knees;
but such profusion is rare, and the novice who is just begin-
ning to know the typical bright green rounded leaves of the
orchids may think he is plunging into their Paradise when he
has found a bog, green with the stout, leafy young plants of
false hellebore.

12 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

The most appropriate home of Cypripedium regina is
in the Adirondacks, where the sun-dew spreads its jewelled
crimson leaves, where the tall royal flowering fern stands
as its water guard, and where the hemlocks leave sunny
spaces between their branches for the light to shine on the
fluttering blossoms.

The plants begin to bloom in June, the earliest being
found in Connecticut about the middle of the month, and in
the Adirondacks and White and Green Mountains in
July, while they are occasionally seen as late as
September.

The tall stem is round and covered with fine hairs that
droop on the upper part, but are bristly below. It stands
erect, clasped hand over hand by sheathing leaves, until just
below the flower stalk where there is a slight bend that gives
the flowers their characteristic poise. The leaves are broad
and oval, measuring from three to seven inches long, and
narrowing with the hairy covered veins to a sharp point.
Their margins have strong, wavy curves, and their colouring
is a rich brilliant green, a little lighter on the under side than
on the upper.

A smaller leaf serves as a bract for the flower and stands
erect above the drooping blossom. What appears to be the
stalk of the flower above this bract is the swollen, fine-ribbed,
curved ovary that looks like a miniature squash or cucumber.

The blossom looks as though it had four white petals
and a pouch. But the large oval banner that stands erect
about the pouch is one of the three sepals, the other two

CYPRIPEDIUM 13

being joined throughout their length to hang as one under
the pouch.

At right angles to the sepals is a pair of narrow, white,
delicately curved petals. Below them hangs the pouch.
It is a beautiful, hollow, shell-like thing, fully an inch across
and an inch deep, and more than an inch long. Spots of
*mauve purple sprinkle its inner surface and show through
its transparent milk-white walls. They converge into a
delicate network of veins that grade softly into a tone of
mauve that grows more intense as it rounds over the in-
curved arch that forms the mouth. Into this the bee or
insect finds its way, attracted by the brighter purple spots
within, but when, after licking the nectar from the hairs
that line the pouch, he tries to climb up the vaulted sides
toward the orifice by which he entered, he finds himself
in a trap. His only chance of escape is through the small
curved openings directly under the pollen masses. These
stick to his coat as he pushes past, and as he tries to enter
another flower are scraped off by the sticky brush of the
thick, white, fleshy, heart-shaped stigma.

In some Cypripedia of Europe that are much like these
of the American woods, naturalists have found small bees
and flies dead in the lovely labellum, because they were
not strong enough nor clever enough to push their way
through the narrow openings to daylight. Small beetles
are sometimes stuck fast by the pollen masses and meet
their death. Doubtless we might find such tragedies at
home, did we watch the retinue that visit this flower. Swarms

I4 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

of a minute flower beetle have been noticed going in and out
for honey, some of which could scarcely walk straight for
the sticking pollen, and on all the flowers visited a magnifying
glass showed little specks of pollen on the stigma, and on
opening the ovary later all the seeds were fertilised.

A well-known botanist once found one blossom on a
stalk with others that had reverted from this grown-together,
irregular type to what we suppose must have been the ances-
tral regular type of the orchid progenitors. The two lower
sepals were separate, and there were three white petals and
no lip, so that the flower looked very like some member of
the lily or iris family, to which the orchids are closely allied.

4. SMALL WHITE LADY’S-SLIPPER
Cypripedium candidum, Willd. (Plate VI.)

THE Small White Lady’s-Slipper grows in the bogs and
meadows of New York, New Jersey and Minnesota, but not
in the New England States. It may be easily recognised,
because it is the only other white Cypripedium beside
regine, and it could never be mistaken for it, because it is
small, less than a foot high, has a solitary blossom, and the
two winged petals on either side of the lip are long and
wavy-twisted, instead of oval. It blooms in May and June.

The three or four leaves are quite narrow and sharply
pointed, not much more than an inch wide to their three or
five inches in length. They stand more stiffly erect than
do the leaves of the Cypripedium regine, and sheath the

diya’ My
vit Hu \ ur io

poy

VI
Fig. 1. Small White Lady’s-Slipper. Fig. 2. Blossom about natural size. Fig. 3. Front and
side view of leaf-like spotted anther. Fig. 4. Front and side view of lip.

len? \
\j a"
\ i y,

\ i]
\ Wen

Fig. 1. Small Yellow Lady’s-Slipper, showing longer, more twisted petals. Fig. 2.
Large Yellow Ladv’s-Slipper.

CYPRIPEDIUM 15

stem from which the flower peers out above its long, narrow
bracts.

The two sepals above and below the lip are longer than
the lip, and are covered with minute hairs; and the two
twisted petals on either side are still longer and narrower
than the sepals and are greenish in colour.

The lip, a neat little white pouch (Fig. 2) less than an
inch long, is striped with purple inside and has a sign-post
at its entrance in the spotted spade-like shield of the sterile
stamen (Fig. 3,4) that points invitingly inward and down
to the opening of the lip.

In this species the sterile stamen has a short stalk, and
one who has followed out the theory of metamorphosis that
Goethe proposed in his youth, that the stamens as well as
all the parts of a flower are but metamorphosed leaves, can
see how this bright leaf-like stamen might roll up to form
two anther cells were it not doomed to sterility for the
sake of protecting the underlying stigma (Fig. 3, B) and
these two anther cells (C) that must always remain open on

the strength of a chance insect visitor.

5. LARGE YELLOW LADY’S-SLIPPER
Cypripedium hirsutum, Mill. (Plates VII. and VIII.)

THERE are two yellow Cypripedia, so crisp and fresh
with their inflated pouches, so cool between their oval
clasping leaves, so sprightly on their tall leafy stems, that

they are to our American woods what the daffodil is, in the

16 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

spring, to the woods of England, though one never sees
“a thousand at a glance.” ‘They add the joy of rarity to
their beauty. They are not so rare but that any one might
find them in the Eastern woods and thickets and mountain
places in the early summer as far south as Virginia, and yet
not so common but that each blossom seems a prize. They
bloom from May to July.

Cypripedium hirsutum has a leafy stem from one to two
feet high and oval, pointed leaves, sometimes five inches
long and three wide. As its name implies, it is covered with
down or hairs. Fluttering from the top of this leafy spire
are one or two pale yellow blossoms. ‘Two sepals, the lower
one split at the tip and yellowish green and striped with
purple, are balanced by two curled and twisted narrow
petals of the same colour. In the centre of these ribboned
petals hangs a pale yellow pouch (Plate VIII., Fig. 2), one or.
two inches in length and spotted with purple. A tuft of
white jointed hairs lies inside just at the top, and the triang-
ular sterile stamen (4) covers the incurved stigma (C).

John Burroughs says that there is a heavy oily odour
about this orchid.

Darwin tried the experiment of putting a small bee to
work on a blossom of Cypripedium pubescens. ‘The insect
entered by the upper opening and attempted to crawl out the
same way, but always fell backward, owing to the margins
being inflected. The bee could not creep out through the
slit between the folded edges of the labellum, as the elongated,

triangular, rudimentary stamen here closes the passage.

CYPRIPEDIUM 64

Ultimately it forced its way out through one of the small
orifices close to one of the pollen masses (B), and when
caught was found smeared with the glutinous pollen.”

It has been noted that on tearing the lip of the Yellow
Lady’s-Slipper apart, there are several crescent-shaped
translucent spots on the back of the labellum, through
which the light can shine more brightly and that help to lead
the imprisoned bee back to where he can catch a glimpse of
the real daylight up above him on either side of the anthers.

There is in France a Yellow Lady’s-Slipper called
“Sabot de la Vierge,”’ and “Soulter de Notre Dame,” that is
very like Cypripedium pubescens, but has a broad band
of hairs on the floor of the labellum. “These,” says Muller,
who has watched thousands of insects pay their visits to the
plants, “seem to help the bees to climb up toward the
orifices, besides attracting them by their secretions.”

6. SMALL YELLOW LADY’S-SLIPPER
Cypripedium parviflorum, Salisb. (Plates VII. and VIII.)

TuE smaller Lady’s-Slipper resembles the larger in every
general description, but can always be distinguished from it
if the two species are seen together. They bloom at about
the same time, and in the same woods. The smaller species
is rarer and roves wider, extending from Newfoundland to
British Columbia, while the larger one is easier to find, but

only from Nova Scotia to Minnesota.

The smaller Yellow Lady’s-Slipper (Plate VII., Fig. 1)

18 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

has narrower leaves, a sweeter fragrance, longer and more
twisted petals (Plate VIII., Fig. 1), a deeper, richer shade of
gold than the larger Yellow Lady’s-Slipper. Its little pouch
is rarely more than an inch long, and is more brilliantly
marked. “Purple spots,” the botanists say when they wish
to describe the flecks and streaks that mark these lovely
pouches, but a clear, dark reddish brown seems nearer.
The colour of claret, of a wine-red autumn leaf, is what
these yellow Cypripediums bear, but purple they will call it:

so must we, only we know what we mean by it.

f \ Gee
ig

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wy atl

VHI

Fig. 1. Blossoms of Small Yellow Lady’s-Slipper, with detail of lip and anther. Fig. 2.
Blossoms of Large Yellow Lady’s-Slipper, with detail of anther and stigma.

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II
ORCHIS

Tuis genus, which bears the name of the family, has
about eighty species growing in the north temperate zone,
but only two of them are known in North America. The
flowers are very like those of the great genus Habenaria, but
larger and more individual instead of being lost in the
effect of the wand or spike which is characteristic of the
Habenarias.

In the genus Orchis the plants have fleshy, fibrous roots,
and in our species the stems consist of the flower stalk rising
from one or two large leaves. The sepals and petals look
much alike, are about equal in size and separate. The lip is
elongated into a spur. The blossoms are beautiful in
colour and shading, being purple and white or rose
coloured.

The anther is two-celled. The two pollen masses or
pollinia lie one in each sac, slightly diverging from one
another. The end of each pollen mass is drawn
out into a slender stem, to which is attached a small
sticky gland, the function of which is described on
page 21.

The capsule is oblong, erect and without a beak.

19

20 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

The two North American species of Orchis may be
distinguished from each other as follows:

Plant two leaved at base, flowers
large, purple and white. 1. Showy Orchis.
Plant one leaved at base, flowers
smaller, petals rose colour, lip
white spotted with purple. 2. Small, Round-leaved Orchis.

I. SHOWY ORCHIS
Orchis spectabilis, L. (Plate X.)

Amonc the earliest flowers of the spring, after the hepati-
cas and blood-roots show their frail blossoms, one may begin
to look for this true harbinger of warm weather. Any-
where in rich woods from New Brunswick to Ontario and
Minnesota, and as far south as Georgia, one may find it, if
one is fortunate, pushing its two thick green leaves up through
the moist matted carpet of the woods and sending up a
scape of beautiful pinkish purple and white flowers.

The Showy Orchis does not grow very tall. Its fleshy
five-angled stem is not more than twelve inches, and rarely
attains even that height. The leaves are, however, com-
paratively large, sometimes eight inches long and four wide.
They are clammy to the touch and spread widely when the
flowering scape appears.

There are seldom more than three to six blossoms,
but each is about an inch long. Leafy bracts sheathe the
ovaries, and the white sepals unite in an arch bending over

the anther cells in such a way as to give the name “Preacher in

ORCHIS 21

the Pulpit” to the orchid, from the fancied resemblance to
two little men standing in a canopied pulpit.

The inward mechanism of this orchid is most interesting.
In its arrangement for attracting insects, no silken chamber
lures the insect in, but a horn of honey is offered to whoever
will apply his wits to get it.

In Mr. Gibson’s notes we read: “In the Showy
Orchid we have what would appear a clear adaptation
to the head of the bee, though one which might also
avail of the service of an occasional butterfly.” An
enlarged view of the blossom is seen in Plate IX., Figs, 1,
2 and 3.

“JT have seen many specimens with the pollen masses
withdrawn, and others with their stigmas well covered with
the grains. Though I have never seen an insect at work
upon it in its haunt, the whole form of the opening of the
flower would seem to imply a bee, particularly a bumble-
bee. If we insert the point of a lead pencil into this opening,
thus imitating the entrance of a bee, its bevelled surface
comes in contact with the viscid discs by the rupture of a
veil of membrane, which has hitherto protected them. The
discs adhere to the pencil and are withdrawn upon it
(Plate IX., Fig. 5). At first in upright position, they soon
assume the forward inclination as previously described.
The nectary is about the length of a bumblebee’s tongue,
and is, moreover, so amply expanded at the throat
below the stigma as to admit its wedge-shaped head
comfortably.

22 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

“The pollen discs are here very close together, and are
protected within a membranous cup, in which they sit as
in a socket. As the insect inserts his head at the opening
(Plate IX., Fig. 2) it is brought against this tender membrane,
which ruptures and exposes the viscid glands of the pollen
masses. These become instantly attached to the face or
head, and perhaps to the eyes of the burly visitor. As the
insect retreats from the flower, one or both of the pollinia
are withdrawn, as at Plate IX., Fig. 3. Then follows a
downward movement, which exactly anticipates the position
of the stigma, and as the bee enters the next flower the pollen
clubs are forced against it.

“In the case of a smaller bee visiting the flower, the insect
would find it necessary to creep further into the opening, and
thus might bring its thorax against the pollen glands. In
either case the change of position in the pollinia would insure
the same result.

‘We have thus seen adaptation to the thorax, the eyes
and the face in the examples given. And the entrance of
the flower in each instance is so formed as to insure the
proper angle of approach for the insect for the accom-
plishment of the desired result. This direct approach,
so necessary in many orchids, is insured by various
devices—by the position of the lip upon which the
insect must alight; by the narrow entrance of the
throat of the flower in front of the nectary; and by a
fissure in the centre of the lip, by which the tongue is

conducted.”

X. Snowy Orcuis

ao
XI. Smart Rounp-teaveD Orcuis

ORCHIS as
2. SMALL ROUND-LEAVED ORCHIS
Orchis rotundifolia, Pursh. (Plate XI.)

For a long time Orchis spectabilis was the only one of
the eighty known species to represent the genus in North
America, for its true sister was called Habenaria rotundi-
folia, but now the Small Round-leaved Orchis (Plate XI.) is
put in its place in the genus Orchis. It is a delicate, pretty
little plant growing in cedar woods and ferny places, and
loving the cold and damp. It grows only in our Northern
States, but has travelled as far as Greenland.

Its one leaf is oval or nearly round, from one and a half
to three inches long. The spike, which is about eight inches
tall, has from two to six minute pale whitish flowers. The
small three-lobed lip, with tiny purple flecks, is larger than
the petals, and has the middle lobe cleft or divided. The
spur is slender and shorter than the lip. It is by no means
as attractive as the Showy Orchid, or as other wonderful
foreign specimens belonging to the genus; but it has the
same interesting but infinitesimal mechanism as its sister.

It blooms in June and July.

II
HABENARIA
(Plate XII.)

Tue genus Habenaria, or Rein-Orchis, as the Greek
name signifies, is a group whose external characteristics are
leafy stems and a wand of many flowers. ‘There are sore
four hundred species in different parts of the world, and
beside the eighteen included in our northeastern limit there
are perhaps twenty others in the southern and western parts
of North America.

The genus Habenaria contains some of the larger plants
of our American orchids. They have substantial fibrous or
tuberous roots and round or pointed leaves, which in some
species are very large. The sepals are nearly equal, some-
times forming a tube at the base and sometimes separate,
but generally spreading at the sides.

The chief flower characteristic is the long spur (Plate XII.)
which hangs from under the drooping, spreading lip. This
lip is often cut or lobed or fringed, and brightly coloured
and marked. By examining it one can get a clue to the
species, for it seems to be the most variant feature.

The position of the pollen masses is extremely interesting.
The coarse pollen granules are packed together and shaped

24

HABENARIA 25

like clubs and lie in parallel anther sacs under the
overarching roof of the rostellum. At the base of the
clubs are little drum-like sticky discs that are so attached
that the pair face each othe: just the width of an insect’s
head apart. The observations that Darwin made in some
of the English species of Habenaria have been confirmed
and illustrated in the blossoms of Habenaria orbiculata.

Mr. Gibson says: “In our own native orchids we have
a remarkable example of the latter form in the Habenaria
orbiculata, Large Round-leafed Orchis, whose structure and
mechanism have also been admirably described by Asa
Gray.”

A single blossom of the species is shown in Plate XII.,
Fig. 1. “The opening to the nectary is seen just below
the stigmatic surface, the nectary (7) itself being nearly two
inches in length. The pollen is in two club-like bodies, each
hidden within a fissured pouch on either side of the stigma,

and coming to the surface at the base in their opposing
sticky discs as shown. Many of the groups of Habenaria

or Platanthera, to which this flower belongs, are similarly
planned. But mark the peculiarly logical association of the
parts here exhibited. The nectary implies a welcome to a
tongue two inches long, and will reward no other. This
clearly shuts out the bees, butterflies and smaller moths.
What insect, then, is here implied? The sphinx-moth
again, one of the lesser of the group. A larger individual
might sip the nectar, it is true, but its longer tongue would
reach the base of the tube without effecting the slightest

26 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

contact with the pollen, which is of course the desideratum
here embodied, and which has reference to a tongue corre-
sponding to the length of the nectary. There are many
of these smaller sphinxes. Let us suppose one to be hovering
at the blossom’s throat. Its slender capillary tongue enters
the opening. Ere it can reach the sweets the insect’s head
must be forced well into the throat of the blossom, where
we now observe a most remarkable special provision, the
space between the two pollen discs being exactly adjusted
to the diameter of the insect’s head. What follows this
entrance of the moth is plainly evident. As the insect
sips, the sticky discs are brought in contact with the moth’s
eyes, to which they adhere, and by which they are with-
drawn from their pouches as the moth departs. At this
time they are in the upright position, but in a few seconds
bend determinedly downward and slightly toward each
other. This change takes place as the moth is flitting from
flower to flower. When the moth with its tongue enters the
nectary of a subsequent blossom, by the new position of the
pollen clubs they are forced directly against the stigma.
This surface is viscid, and as the insect leaves the blossom
retains the grains in contact, which in turn withdraw others
from the mass by means of the cobwebby threads by which
the pollen grains are continuously attached. Thus after
the moth’s visit the stigma is covered with pollen and the
flower cross fertilised.

“In effecting the cross fertilisation of one of the younger

flowers its eyes are again brought in contact with this second

vinds pue dy 3urduey paaino Surmoys ‘mata daptg +z “Sry -urossoqq JO JLOIY. OJUT Suryoor ‘mara quory 1 Try
SIHOU Naaqu AAWG TI WOUd NaANY SWOSSOT WIVYNGIGY JO adh 7 “ig
oO r3) a L L a H DL TIX

I
u

oe -ands’ Cunyoont

ly,

Soi

Rae

ae

" Aft yf)
Wy WA 4
as

y
e

\

'

’

Fig. z. Flower slightly enlarged.

Fig. 1. Large Round-leaved Orchis.

HABENARIA 27

pair of discs, and these, with their pollen clubs, are in turn
withdrawn, at length perhaps resulting in such a plastering
of the insect’s eyes as might seriously impair its vision, were
it not fortunately of the compound sort.”

Of the four hundred species of Habenaria that grow all
over the world eighteen are found in our Northeastern States,
and about twenty more in the southern and western parts
of North America.

The species may be distinguished from each other by the

arrangement of the leaves on the stem, by the shape and
length of the spur, and by the cutting, fringing of the lip,
and by the colour of the blossoms in the mass.

KEY TO SPECIES OF HABENARIA

Two leaves rising from the base of
the flower stalk.
Flower stalk with bracts. 1. Large Round-leaved Orchis.
Flower stalk without bracts. 2. Hooker’s Orchis.

A single leaf rising from the base of
the flower stalk. 3. Small Northern Bog Orchis.

Leaves several or numerous.
Lip entire, not parted or fringed.
Ovary straight, an exception
tothe characteristic twisted
ovary. 4. Small Southern White Orchis._
Ovary twisted, flowers green-
ish yellow, lip lanceolate. 5. Tall Leafy Green Orchis.

Flowers white, lip broad at
base. 6. Tall White Bog Orchis.

Lip with a wavy or toothed mar-
gin, flowers orange yellow. 7. Small Southern Yellow Orchis.

28

Lip with two or three distinct
teeth.
Spur-like sac shorter than
the ovary, long bracts be-
neath the flowers.

Spur slender, curved, longer
than the ovary.

Lip with a tooth on each side of
base, and a tubercle at the

middle.

Lip deeply fringed.
Spur half as long as ovary,
flowers yellow.

Spur longer than ovary,
Flowers bright yellow.
Flowers white.

Lip three-parted.
Segments of lip narrow, deep
fringe of a few threads,
flowers greenish yellow.

Segments of lip broad, fan-
shaped and fringed to the
middle, flowers white.

Segments fringed about one-
third or less, flowers lilac.

Large, showy raceme, lip
from half an inch to an
inch broad.

Smaller, and more slender
wand, lip quarter to half
an inch broad.

Segments of the lip cut-
toothed, flowers violet
purple.

10.

Il.

12.
13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

. Long-bracted Orchis.

. Small Green Wood Orchis.

Tubercled Orchis.

Crested Yellow Orchis.

Yellow Fringed Orchis.
White Fringed Orchis.

Ragged Orchis.

Prairie White Fringed Orchis.

Large Purple Fringed Orchis.

Smaller Purple Fringed Orchis.

Fringeless Purple Orchis.

HABENARIA 29

I. LARGE ROUND-LEAVED ORCHIS
Habenaria orbiculata (Pursh) Torr. (Plate XIII.)

THERE is perhaps no other orchid that so clearly and
emphatically makes its presence known in season and out
as the Large Round-leaved Orchis. In wandering through
the hemlock shades of a wooded hill, or where scant under-
brush in rich woods permits glimpses of the forest carpet, one
knows it by the two large, round, shining green leaves.
Whether the stout, bracted, flowering scape 1ises between
them or not, one can be sure of this orchis merely by the
leaves, for they are silvery beneath. Their average is four
to seven inches in diameter, though specimens of nine inches
have been reported.

Mr. Gibson writes of it: “All orchid hunters know this
most exceptional example of our local flora, and the thrill
of delight experienced when one first encounters it in the
mountain wilderness is an event to date from—its two great
glistening fluted leaves, sometimes as large as a dinner
plate, spreading flat upon the mould and surmounted by the
slender leafless stalk with its terminal loose raceme of
grayish-white bloom.”

The distinctive feature of the loose raceme is that its
many flowers flutter off from the stem, hanging on pedicles
that are nearly half an inch long, and having a long spur,
much longer than the ovary hanging beneath the lip.

Although this orchid is not showy, it is conspicuous, for

it grows from one to two feet in height, and has a sturdy look

30 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

about its pale green-white flowers, which is increased by the
fact that those which have gone to seed stand stiffly erect.
It grows all over the middle of the continent, from New-
foundland to British Columbia, and from North Carolina to
Minnesota. In the mountains of Virginia it climbs to the
height of 4,500 feet.

Though the blossoms are not very prominent by day,
they are pale enough to show white in the dark, as do many
greenish-white flowers growing in shady places; and they are
visited by the butterflies and moths that fly after sunset, in
that beautiful time when the “Night Watch” of the wood-
land is silently taking the place of the sleepy chirping birds,
and the gay flitting insects of the sunshine.

The honey that these night visitors seek is deep in the
long spur which measures an inch to an inch and a half in
length.

Both the Large Round-leaved Orchis and its smaller
relative, Hooker’s Orchid, which is next described, have their
pollen masses arranged so as to crowd against the eye of
an insect visitor, who, by reason of the little beak on the
stigma, which may be seen in the illustration of Hooker’s
Orchid, must push into the opening of the nectar cup as best

he can.

2. HOOKER’S ORCHID

Habenaria Hookertana, A. Gray. (Plate XIV.)

Hooker’s Orcuip is one of the earliest of our native

orchids to appear in the spring. It grows in the same

HABENARIA 31

localities and at about the same time as Orchis
spectabilis.

It rises like Habenaria orbiculata from two thick shining
leaves that do not, however, lie flat on the ground, but
rise slightly. ‘They are round or oval, three to five and a
half inches long, and sharply, smoothly veined. The whole
plant is small, from eight to fifteen inches high, and half
that length is taken up by the loose many-flowered raceme
of yellowish-green flowers. The flowers have tiny, sharp,
spreading green sepals, very narrow petals, and a narrow,
sharp-pointed lip less than half an inch long. The spur is
also slender and sharp and as long or longer than the
ovary.

Habenaria Hookeriana is a midland plant, growing from
June to September, from Nova Scotia to Minnesota, and as
far south as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Iowa.

There is an English orchid, Habenaria chlorantha, that
closely resembles this orchid in its structure, and what
Darwin has observed concerning the plant familiar to him,
we have found true of Hooker’s Orchid.

“Habenaria chlorantha depends -for its fertilisation,”
says Darwin, “on the larger nocturnal Lepidoptere. The
anther cells are separated by a wide space of connective
membrane, and the pollen masses are enclosed in a back-
ward sloping direction. ‘The inside discs front each other
and stand in advance of the stigmatic surface. Each disc
is circular and in the early bud consists of a mass of cells, of

which the exterior layers resolve themselves into matter

32 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

which remains adhesive for at least twenty-four hours
after the pollen mass has been removed.”

The structure of these discs is the same in Hooker’s
Orchid as in Habenarta chlorantha. ‘The stalk of the pollen
mass is not attached to the disc directly, but is connected
with a little drum-like hinge to which it is fastened at right
angles (Plate XIV., Fig. 3). An insect pushing his head
between these sticky discs is apt to carry off one or both of the
pollen masses, which at first almost stand erect on his head
like a pair of horns, and seem, when he enters another
flower, to be in danger of hitting against the anther sacs or
the discs, and never reaching the stigma. But peep, if you
can, at this drum-like hinge under a microscope and you will
see a pretty bit of mechanism. The drum contracts or
shrinks on the inner under side and pulls the pollen masses
down and forward, so that by the end of a few seconds,
when the insect is.ready to enter another flower, the pollen
masses are in the right position to come in contact with the
stigma.

Professor Gray said that he had seen a butterfly in Canada
that had a pollen mass of Habenaria Hookeriana attached
to each eye, but as a rule unless a large insect enters this
orchid its head is hardly large enough to squeeze between
the two discs. But this slight difficulty is overcome by the
fact that the lip is curved upward instead of hanging down,
and the stigma has a sharp central prominence, so that the
flower has the appearance of being divided in half and the

insect is generally obliged to approach the nectary in a side-

\ Ae s. 2
_ SNK 4 \
he Sa % \k ; ‘J
ia : 1 -
2 bn

XIV
Fig. 1. Hooker's Orchis. Fig. z. Portion of blossom,
between discs.

showing entrance to throat

Fig. 3. Pollinia attached to drum-like disc.

XV. Smart NorTHERN Boo Orcuis

Fig. 1. Plant about two-thirds its natural size. Fig. 2. Single blossom, very much
enlarged. Fig. 3. Pollinium. Fig. 4. Spur cut open.

HABENARIA 33

way fashion, and is sure to get at least one pollen mass on
the side of his head.

3. SMALL NORTHERN BOG ORCHIS
FHlabenaria obtusata (Pursh) Richards. (Plate XV.)

SIDE by side with the two more striking round-leaved
orchis comes one related to them in structure, but so
different in appearance and habitat as to appear a very
distant relation. It is a tiny green and white plant, com-
monly known as the Dwarf Orchis, growing in cold, wet,
mountainous places. It is found in the Green Mountains
from the last of June on through July, and in the White
Mountains as late as August. Although it is not very
common, yet it is found growing in wet places throughout
the states north of Lake Superior, and also in Colorado.

The accompanying illustrations are so full in the en-
largement of their detail that they give but a faint idea
how tiny the flower is. The. whole plant is but a few, at
most ten, inches high. The single basal leaf is often not
more than two, never more than five, inches in length, and
barely an inch wide. ‘The loose-flowered spike is from one
to two and a half inches long and the flowers do not measure
half an inch, and yet the arrangement for the reception of
insects is peculiarly careful, and the wide distribution of
the orchid along the wet places of the Northern States shows
that it has not suffered extermination for lack of fertilisation.

The anther sacs are widely separated below (Plate XV.,

34 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

Fig. 2), probably to leave room in so small a flower for
the insect’s head, while beneath them on the lip going into
the mouth of the spur (Fig. 4), (which in his illustration
Mr. Gibson has shown cut open) there run two ridges which
converge and make a two-lobed ridge. ‘This doubtless serves
to swerve the insect’s tongue in such a way that he must turn
his head to receive the disc on one side or the other and pull

out at least one pollen mass (Fig. 3).

4. SOUTHERN SMALL WHITE ORCHIS
Habenarta nivea (Nutt.) Spreng. (Plate XVI., Fig. 1.)

THE striking thing about the Small White Orchis of the
South is its fine, thin, twisted stem angled with a host of
small bract-like leaves pressed closely to it.and one long
ribbon that flutters from near the base. Sometimes there is
a gradation between the long grass-like basal leaf and the
others; but generally the contrast is sharp, and the lowest
one is four to eight inches long and the upper so small that -
they merge into the bracts of the spike.

The general appearance of the stem is rather naked, as it
appears to have but one leaf—and that like a whip-lash—in
its twelve to fifteen inches of height. It bears a loose wand
two to four inches long, with many small white blossoms.

An interesting, unexplained and, indeed, unique char-
acteristic of these apparently unremarkable flowers is the
presence of a straight ovary. With a magnifying glass,
peering into the maze of spurs and bracts in the spike, one

Fig. 1. Southern Small White Orchis. Fig. 2. Southern Small: Yellow Orchis. Fig. 3. Single
blossom of Southern Small White Orchis, showing straight ovary.

Fig. 1. Tall Leafy Green Orchis. Fig. -. Tall White Bog Orchis.

HABENARIA 35

will see that the ribs of the ovaries are straight instead of
being twisted around as they are in every other orchid we
have described. ‘This brings the lip on the top of the blos-
som and causes the long and rather straight and slender
spur to hang from above, instead of from beneath the flower.
Why should this species have the stem so strangely twisted
and the ovary so straight? How do the insects accommodate
themselves to this spur that arches in the air instead of
swinging from under the lip? ‘The questions are hard to
answer, for the orchid is rare to find, since it is a denizen of
the pine barren bogs from Delaware to Florida and almost
as shy as its Southern yellow mate, Habenaria integra.*
Whoever will find it and spend a week of days in rubber
boots watching its winged guests come and go, to see whether
they stand on their heads to enter and whether they fly
away pollen laden, may solve a mystery that dates back
to prehistoric days. Perhaps there are some odd manners
left over from the Tertiary age, when plants that are now
found only in fossil form on the pine barrens were the
progenitors of the modern orchid. Possibly the straight
ovary is a relic of an earlier simpler form of orchid, and the
twisted ovary a concession to the manners of insects of later
days, and possibly it is because the insects are not well

adapted to the overarching spur, that the plant is so
rare.

*Dr. Britton of the New York Botanical Garden says that he has gathered it but once,
and that it was an exquisite and graceful little thing. Dr. Rydberg, an authority on orchids,
says regretfully that he has never gathered it, and even pressed specimens are rare.

36 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS
5. TALL LEAFY GREEN ORCHIS
Habenaria hyperborea (L.) R. Br. (Plate XVII, Fig. 1.)

WE come now to a group of orchids with strong leafy
- green stems. ‘The leaves ascend the stalk, clasping or half
sheathing it, and at the summit is a close raceme of pale
flowers.

Perhaps the two species of the Habenaria group that are
the hardest to distinguish one from another are the Tall
Leafy Green Orchis and the Tall White Bog-Orchis. A
great many botanists have considered them varieties of the
same species, and Asa Gray says that he was tempted to
come to the same conclusion, but on close examination he
found besides other characteristics, of which the chief is the
column, a remarkable physiological difference, viz., that
the Tall White Bog Orchis depended on insects for its
fertilisation, while in the Tall Leafy Green Orchis the pollen
masses commonly fall out of the anther cells while the flower
is very young or in bud, and the stigma is thus generally
self fertilised.

The descriptions of these two species read almost like
duplicate sentences. One must notice the differences in
degree and remember that the Tall Leafy Green Orchis
is stouter and larger and that the average measurements
of each must be taken into consideration all through the
species.

The Tall Leafy Green Orchis grows from eight inches
to three feet in height. Its leaves are sharp-pointed and

HABENARIA 37

narrow, and from two to twelve inches long and from half
an inch to an inch and a half in width. .

The spike is narrow, from three to eight inches in
length, and the flowers are greenish or greenish yellow.
This is perhaps the sign by which the species can
be most readily distinguished, but it is one that botanists
never permit themselves to trust; for nearly every
plant has albino freaks, and that alone would not be
sufficient to split those two closely resembling orchids into
two species.

The sepals and petals of the Tall Leafy Green Orchis are
ovate and obtuse and about a quarter of aninch long. The
upper petals curve over the tips of the two side petals in a
little hood. The lip, which is about the same length as the
sepals, is lanceolate, entire, with a rounded point at the
tip. The spur is also about a quarter of an inch long, and
is slightly incurved. Leafy bracts a little larger than the
flowers rise from the base of each slightly twisted
ovary.

With a magnifying glass one can raise these small flowers
to the dimensions of Mr. Gibson’s drawings of the Tall
White Bog Orchis (Plate XVIII., Figs. 1 and 2), which
they closely resemble.

Their stalks are slender and weak, and as the anther
sacs are slightly divergent and: somewhat overhanging from
the curvature of the flower, the pollen masses are apt to fall
out of them. On opening buds of this orchis, one will

often find that the pollen masses have fallen over and are

38 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

lying against the surface of the stigma. Yet their oval
discs stil] retain their stickiness, and as they are placed in
the same position relative to the mouth of the spur as mi
other Habenarias, a visiting insect is apt to draw off a part
of the pollen mass from its position on the stigma and to
transfer it to another flower. In such a case the flower
gets the benefit of cross fertilisation as well as self
fertilisation.

Darwin and Asa Gray, who corresponded with each
other in this curious exception to the usual rule of cross
fertilisation, could not tell whether the Tall Leafy Green
Orchis bore its full complement of seeds or not. This is an
opportunity for further observation, as well as for
meditating in the company of scientists and philosophers
on the question as to what economic force has so affected
these orchids that with every contrivance at hand for cross
fertilisation, they nevertheless persist in trying to fertilise
themselves.

Possibly because of the plant’s arctic tendencies, it has
not always been able to attract insects to its hyperborean
latitudes. It is reported as far north as Alaska, and
is known in Greenland and Iceland. Could it have
been forced to fertilise itself in those cold regions, and
have perpetuated the tendency in warmer climes? It
grows as far south as New Jersey, Colorado and Oregon, but
where the country is mountainous it climbs high, 6,000 and
even 8,000 feet. It blooms from May to August, according
to its latitude and altitude.

HABENARIA 39

6. TALL WHITE BOG ORCHIS

Hlabenaria dilatata (Pursh) Hook. (Plates XVII., Fig. 2,
and XVIII.)

Tue Tall White Bog Orchis, or Northern Orchis, as
Baldwin calls it, is doubtless, he says, “associated in many
a mind with a Maine carry, a White Mountain flume, or a
Green Mountain notch. Perhaps,” he adds, “you recall
the very spot, a green nook near the limpid pool in which
you dipped your hands; or it may have been higher up,
where white-throated sparrows were whistling through the
mist, and icy springs came trickling through beds of moss and
snowberry, and the bleak summit was almost gained.

“This orchis is one of the most stately children of the
forest, and her velvety spike, springing out of rank sedges
and ferns, catches the eye at once, or where the plant grows
profusely, so perfumes the air as to need no other sign of its
presence.”

So many have thought it a less luxuriant form of the
preceding species, the Tall Leafy Green Orchis, that it
has been stated that the flowers are white in the open and
green in the woods; but this species holds its colour pretty
steadily. It is a pure white, though occasionally plants have
been found with a spike tinged with pink or purple.

The leafy stem is more slender and taller than in the
Tall Leafy Green Orchis. It grows from one to two feet
in height and its sheathing leaves are narrower, less than an
inch in width and from two to ten inches long. The sharp

40 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

bracts that grow at the base of the ovaries are longer than
they are at the lower part of the wand-like spike, but shorter
above.

The small white flowers (Plate XVIII., Figs. 1 and 2) are
shaped as to sepals and petals exactly like the small green
ones of its closely resembling species. But they are fewer
than in the spike of the Tall Leafy Green Orchis, and the
throat is not so open nor the lip so spreading. The pollen
masses lie in parallel anther sacs and are attached by fila-
ments to two discs that are shaped very much like a pair
of human soles (Fig. 3). Between the anther sacs is the
stigma, with a trowel-shaped rostellum curving over it.

The throat of the flower is a narrow chamber, and the
sole-shaped discs and stigma lie so close within that if an
insect thrusts its proboscis in, it cannot avoid getting one of
these sticking discs on its cheek. ‘The little stems that attach
the pollen masses to the discs are very short and flat, and
do not, as far as Asa Gray observed, bend down on being
withdrawn. In fact they seem already to be bent into such
a position that they will touch the stigma of another flower
as soon as the bee enters it.

Sometimes the anther cell opens early, as they do in the
preceding species, and the pollen masses fall out; but as far
as could be seen, they never could fall on the under surface
of their own stigma, consequently this plant must depend
upon insects to fertilise it.

This orchis lives in cold, wet places and is found in the
mountains of New Hampshire at the height of 5,000 feet

Pollen mass-- +.

Sole-shaped disc.

XVIII. Tart Wuite Boc Orcuis

Fig. 1. Front view of blossom. Fig. z. Side view. Fig. 3. Anther with pollinia in
place, and magnification of sole-shaped disc attached to pollinia.

XIX
Fig. 1. Long-bracted Orchis. Fig. 2. Blossom enlarged.

HABENARIA 41

and in Nevada at 8,000 feet. It ranges from Nova Scotia
to Alaska and from Maine and New York to Utah and
Oregon. It blooms from June to September.

7. SMALL SOUTHERN YELLOW ORCHID
Habenarta integra (Nutt.) Spreng. (Plate XVIL., Fig. 2.)

Tue Small Southern Yellow Orchid is not so small and
delicate a thing as its name implies. It is a rather strong,
stout, smooth plant growing from one to two feet in height
and bearing a dense spike one to three inches long of small
orange-yellow blossoms.

It is not a common orchid, as it has the inherited idiosyn-
crasy of forgotten ages that makes it prefer the wet pine
barrens of the coast to the richer soil of the inland forests.
It has been collected in swamps in the pine barrens in Florida
and the savannahs near Wilmington, North Carolina, and
follows that remnant of a forgotten continent known as the
pine barren region as far north as New Jersey.

Its chief characteristic is one to three strong, stout leaves
that tend to fold in half as they spring from their clasping
bases. The lowest one may be eight inches long, and
followed by several that are successively shorter, but often
there is but one, about six inches long and one inch broad,
which is followed by a small leaf and then seven or eight
bracts at intervals of about one inch, along the straight,
deep-ribbed stem.

In the flower the upper sepals and petals come together

42 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

to form a little hood, while the sepals at the side spread out
and are a little longer than the petals. The lip is almost
entire, giving the species the name integra, which means
“whole.” It is, however, slightly cut around the margin. It
is not large and showy, neither is the straight spur that
hangs a trifle longer than the lip remarkable for any peculiar
shape. Looking into the heart of a flower with a microscopic
eye, one may see a pair of little fleshy horns with the back of
the stigma protruding between them.

8. LONG-BRACTED ORCHIS
Habenarta bracteata (Willd.) R. Br. (Plate XIX.)

One would never notice this slight inconspicuous orchis,
with its few inches of leafy stem and its tiny closely pressed
green flowers, were one not in the mood to “peep and
botanise.”’ Even at its maximum height of two feet its
blossoms are not attractive to the eye. Compare these
minute flowers with narrow thread-like petals, barely a
quarter of an inch long, and the strap-like lobed lips and
the very short sac-like spur, with the painted glories of the
florist or even with some of the beautiful fringed wands of
the other native-growing Habenarias, and one wonders
that they both are called orchis; and yet a good hand lens
will magnify the flower into a very elaborate and exquisitely
modelled member of the family. The anther sacs lie side by
side, with diverging apertures from which are drawn a pair
of club-shaped pollen masses, exactly as in the types that

HABENARIA 43

have been described. It has one familiar and easily recog-
nised characteristic, the long leafy bracts that give it its
scientific name. These project much beyond the flowers
in the small two to five-inch spike, and are two or three times
as long as they are at the base, but grow gradually shorter
as they reach the summit.

The Long-bracted Orchis has a wide habitat. It grows
in woods and meadows from New Brunswick to British
Columbia and from North Carolina to Nebraska. It
climbs the mountains as high as 3,600 feet in Virginia and
seems as much at home in Europe as America. It there-
fore possesses some secret of attraction for insects—some
microscopic charm of night odour, or some hint of hidden
nectar that invites tiny insects to its portal to bear away
their infinitesimal clubs of pollen, and thus keep the species
widely spread.

9. SMALL GREEN WOOD ORCHIS
Habenarta clavellata (Michx.) Sprengel. (Plate XX.)

In the warm summer weather in July and August the
Small Green Wood Orchis blooms in wet woods all over
the eastern portion of the American continent from New-
foundland and Minnesota to Florida. It has been found
as early as June 6th along pine wood streams in Louisiana,
and as late as August 28th in Tennessee, and September 2d
on the shores of Pyramid Lake in northern New York. It

grows on the sea-bound island of Martha’s Vineyard, and at

44 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

an altitude of 6,000 feet in North Carolina and of 2,500 feet
in the Green Mountains. It is a common orchid and one
that is easily recognised by its very slender-angled grass-like
stem and its single long, broad leaf that clasps the stem
about one-quarter of the distance from its thick, fibrous
root. This large base leaf, which is usually four or five
inches long and an inch broad, is followed by a small lance-
shaped leaf that clasps the stem a little higher up; and then
come three or four tiny bract-like leaves, and finally the loose
spike, not more than two inches long, of small greenish-
white flowers. The whole plant does not exceed eighteen
inches in height, and is generally about a foot high.

The spikes are loose and small, about two inches long,
and having ten to twelve half-inch blossoms, though often
there are but five or six. Below each flower grows a tiny
leaf-like bract that is shorter than its twisted ribbed ovary,
and curving beneath each lip is a long, slender spur. The
lip is the distinguishing feature of this species, as it broadens
at the apex and is three-toothed.

The name clavellata means “‘little club,’ and refers to
the club-shaped spur. The orchid was formerly called
tridentata, possibly because its lip was three-notched, but
more probably because of three teeth or knobs or horns that
appear on the stigma. One lies outside each anther cell
and one between the cells. These may be, according to
Gray, who described them, sterile stamens. He notes that
they are sticky on their surfaces, and the spontaneously
detached grains of pollen stick fast to them and “send

Fig. 1. Small Green Wood Orchis. Fig. 2. Single flower enlarged.

Fig. 1. Tubercled Orchis. Fig. 2. Single flower enlarged.

HABENARIA 45

down pollen tubes freely into their substance, so that they
appear to act as stigmas, though the normal stigma is found
in its proper place and of ordinary appearance underneath
the discs.” This real stigma does not seem as sticky as
these little clubs; but it does not seem possible that this
promiscuous and apparently careless breaking off of the
pollen masses and the sticky horns that are above the stigma
can have anything to do with the fertilisation of the plant, for
when the discs at the base of the stalks of the pollen masses
are touched the entire mass is removed and the stalks bend
down in the typical way under the weight of the masses.

This orchid has the peculiar habit of being ready for its
visitors several days before the blossoms open. At least
four or five days before the folded petals part the pollen is
ripe and the anther cells are open, and there appears to be
danger of the pollen falling out. And yet in peering into the
flowers that are freshly opened, one sees that fragments
which fall from the pollen masses could not fall on the stig-
matic surfaces of the same flower, for the blossom when it
‘first opens is horizontal and any detached fragments would
fall on either side. It must then depend on insects as the
others do.

10. TUBERCLED ORCHIS. SMALL PALE-GREEN ORCHIS
Habenaria flava (L.) A. Gray. (Plate XXI.)

Ir the name Small Green Orchis serves to make-a. dis-

tinction in the mind between the other large green orchis,

46 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

such as the Round-leafed and Hooker’s Orchis, then one
must learn to separate this from the preceding one by
noticing that the Tubercled Orchis has a leafy stem, and
that the Small Green Wood Orchis has only a single leaf at
its base and bracts the rest of the way up the stem. Another
distinguishing feature is that the spur in this one is short and
does not swing down under its twisted ovary like a crescent
moon, as in the one just described.

Having noticed these characteristic differences, one may
dwell upon the general features. ‘The stem is rather stout,
and at most two feet high. The leaves that crowd upon it
are elliptical or lance shaped, and may or may not be sharp-
pointed. ‘They are sometimes a foot long, but usually about
half that length. ‘The spike of flowers is about the length
of a finger, though it may grow to six inches, and the little
sharp green bracts bristle out between the small greenish-
yellow flowers.

The characteristic that gives this plant its name is a
little tubercle that lies in the middle of the lip, at its base,
just as it hangs off below the anther sacs (Plate XXI.;
Fig. 2). It does not seem to have any particular economic
function, and yet possibly nothing has been said about its
value, because no one has watched it entertaining its insect
friends. Whatever may be its function, it is faithfully
produced on the lip of each plant, whether it be found in a
wet meadow in Ontario or Minnesota, or in Florida or
Louisiana. Some progenitor in bygone ages originated

this little tubercle, and with the faithfulness with which

HABENARIA 47

beetles reproduce their markings and caterpillars their
knobs, this inconspicuous Small Pale-green Orchis has
perpetuated its tubercle to this day.

II. CRESTED YELLOW ORCHIS
Habenarta cristata (Michx.) R. Br. (Plate XXII.)

THERE are two yellow orchids with fringed petals,
Ai. cristata and H.. ciliaris. They look much alike in word
descriptions, but when one has the flower of either to
examine, two glances will decide the species; a first one at
the thickness of the long spike of blossoms, H. cristata being
one to one and a half inches in diameter and H. ciliaris
nearly or quite three inches across; and a second glance at
the kind of fringe on the lip, H. cristata has the loose
fringed part deeper than the unfringed portion of the lip,
and H. ciliaris has a long oblong lip deeply fringed all the
way around.

Habenaria cristata is the more southern of the two. It
grows chiefly in bogs from New Jersey to Florida and
Louisiana, becoming more plentiful as it gets further south.
It is a slender leafy-stemmed plant, growing from eight inches
to two feet in height, with two or three lanceolate leaves
two to eight inches long clasping the angled stem at intervals
on its lower half, and on its upper half a number of small
sharply pointed leaved that pass into the flower bracts of
the spike.

The spike is two to four inches long. Its bright orange

48 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

flowers are the same length as the bracts that grow beneath
them. The flower itself is not very large, perhaps a half
to three-quarters of an inch, including the slender twisted
ovary. The sepals are roundish-ovate, and those at the
side spread apart. The two small upper petals and the
lip are fringed like the teeth of a comb, through more than
half their length. The spur is shorter than the lip, and less
conspicuous in this species than in Habenaria ciliaris. It

blossoms from July to August.

12. YELLOW FRINGED ORCHIS
Habenarta ciliaris (L.) R. Br. (Plate XXIII.)

Mr. Henry Batpwin, the orchid lover of New England,
has said that this orchid should be called “ Flaming Orchis,”’
“a fit symbol of the wealth and glow of August; resplendent
in orange and gold, not only in sepals and petals, but even
in spurs and ovaries, and admitting but one rival, the
Cardinal Flower, burning its torch well into September in
northern New England.”

It is delightful to note that this orchid is not rare. There
is a bog near Plymouth, Mass., where it is said to be “almost
a weed,” and there are places near New York where it is
gathered by the ruthless in armfuls. The Northern woods,
whose flowers are often so inconspicuous compared with those
of the South, glory in this orchid, for in many a ferny meadow,
or open bog, or the wet banks of a brook, all the way from
New England to Minnesota, and south to Florida and

XXII. Crestep Yerrow Orcuis

y)

SS UA Se =.
SSS

=

Gp

a

AIL

Figs. 2 and 3. Flower of Yellow Fringed Orchis, much

1. Yellow Fringed Orchis.

Fig.

enlarged.

HABENARIA 49

Louisiana, these blossoming rods of gold rise fringed and
feathered among the tall grasses of July and August.

The Yellow Fringed Orchis is one of the tallest and
stoutest of all our orchids. It often grows two and a half
to three feet tall, and has long narrow leaves with sharp
points that may measure twelve inches, but that generally
are four to eight inches long. ‘These are large at the base,
but after the first two or three dwindle abruptly into bract-
like leaves, that give the stem the appearance of being
naked for a foot or more of its length. At the summit
bursts forth this mass of golden fringe, in a spike of blossoms
three to six inches long and often three inches thick.

The individual flowers are orange or yellow, large and
showy. The sepals are rounded and broader than they are
long, and spread like ears at either side of the lip, while the
third one is hooded over the column. ‘The two upper petals
are very narrow and generally toothed, and are almost
hidden under the hooded sepal. The long lip, with its
deep fringe, must offer a dazzling threshold to passing
insects, who find awaiting them the opening to the long,
slender spur that contains the nectar.

As an insect alights at the bottom of the stalk to visit the
first blossom, his weight bends the long lip down to such a
degree that he would slip off were it not for the dense fringe
to which he seems to cling as he clambers up, shaking the
whole spike as he goes. But arriving at the opening of the
spur that holds the nectar in the tip of its long, slender tube,
he unfurls his tongue and sucks. ‘The meanwhile his head

50 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

is pushed into a narrow aperture between two sticky discs, to
which are attached the stalks that bear the pollen masses.
They lie nearly horizontal, diverging at the disc end. The
stalks are two or three times as long as the pollen masses
which they bear.

Which are the particular insect visitors that flutter
around this torch of the meadows, no Darwin has yet
recorded. It is a bit of observation that any one might
make who has long summer leisure to haunt a bog or brook
by which the Yellow Crested Orchis grows. The data are
all at hand in the blossom itself. The space between the
discs is about one and a half lines wide, so that an insect
must have a head about the same width if he would press
against them and on backing out draw forth the pollen
masses. The spur is from an inch to an inch and a half
in length, and is very slender, so the insect’s tongue must
be about an inch long if he would be sure of reaching the
nectar.

To prove the fact that the insects do visit it, it is only
necessary to count the seed capsules at the end of the summer.
But the act, the presence of the winged desire, the actual
entrance of the butterfly or moth into the fringed portal,
the flying off with the pollen masses sticking by their discs to
his eyes and bending forward by their own weight, and his
entry to another where they will strike again the viscid
stigma just under the column, and send the thrill of creation
down the narrow twisted ovary to quicken the waiting

ovules—this is a mystery with a key—that needs only time

HABENARIA 51

and patience and watchful cyes. It may be solved by you
or me. And certainly no more attractive subject of study
could be found than to watch the life habits of this Yellow
Crested Orchis, with its amber horns dripping with nectar
and its fringed banners fluttering to the breeze.

13. THE WHITE FRINGED ORCHIS
Habenaria blephariglottis (Willd.) Torrey. (Plate XXIV.)

Tue White Fringed Orchis is apparently an albino
sister of the Yellow Fringed Orchis, and yet it has distinctive
characteristics that make it a constant species. Although a
description of the White, save in colour words, sounds
exactly like a description of the Yellow, yet side by side the
White Fringed Orchis is always a little smaller and a little
less robust. Its pure white flowers are smaller, its oblong
fringed lip is narrower, and the fringe is seldom as thick as
on the lip of the Yellow Orchis. These two orchids fre-
quently grow side by side in the same swamp, and that the
bees and insects are indiscriminate match makers is very
evident from the fact that in marshes where both grow
together there will be found a hybrid form with pale yellow
blossoms.

Blephariglottis is the name that has recently been
adopted by some authors for the fringed orchids—those that
were the most eagerly sought and the best known in the
large old-named group of Habenaria. To a Greek child
in the woods of Hellas, did any of these fringed orchis

52 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

grow there, the name would be a perfectly simple and appro-
priate nickname. Blepharon means “beard” or “fringe,”
and glottis “throat,” and the combination Blephariglottis is
the equivalent of our adjectives “fringed” or“ crested throat.”
It is, however, not the throat, but the petals and the hanging
lip that are fringed or cut or cleft. These give a peculiarly
starry effect to the flowers, which grow in tall, strong open
spikes, with space enough between the individual blossoms
to let each petal hang its delicate fringe to the breeze.

These loose but most symmetrically arranged spikes,
tapering to a point at the budding end, are among the
loveliest floral wands that grow. The first effect is of a
delicate silky fringed maze forming a spike of lavender,
yellow or white, but looking closely into it one sees that its
charm lies in the beauty of the grouping of the flowers on
the stalk. Each flower has a very slender twisted ovary,
that curves away from the stalk at such an angle as to hang
the fringe petals on the outside of the spike wand. The
base of each ovary is sheathed by a delicate sharp-pointed
leaf bract that is sometimes long enough to protrude its
bright green tip between the fringes of the circling blossoms.
From the base of the twisted lip there swings a long spur
curved like a scimitar, and hanging longer than the lip itself.
Down in the depths of its wax-like white or gold or lavender
tube is the nectar well that the long-tongued insect seeks,
and to reach which he must strive strenuously and press
against the sticky discs of the pollen masses. The anther

sacs in this genus are widely separated and diverge from one

HABENARIA 53

another so that there is a space wide enough between the
discs of the pollen masses for the broad head of a
bumblebee.

Gray says that these two closely allied orchids are
“chiefly remarkable for having their viscid discs projecting
much more even than in Habenaria orbiculata, the anterior
part of the anther cell and the supporting arm of the stigma
united tapering and lengthened to such a degree that the
viscid discs are as if raised on a pedicel, projecting consider-
ably beyond the rest of the column. ‘The anther cells are
nearly horizontal, greatly divergent, but inclined somewhat
inward at the ends, so that the discs are presented forward
and slightly inward, at least in Habenaria blephariglottis
or in Habenarta ciliaris more directly forward. Evidently
these projecting discs are to be stuck to the head of some
nectar-sucking insect. The stigma, which is rather small,
is between the lateral arms, in the same horizontal line with
the discs; the discs are small but quite sticky and directly
affixed to the extremity of a stalk which, in just proportion
to the forward elongation of the anther cell, etc., is remark-
ably long and slender, twice or thrice the length of the pollen
mass it bears. Upon removal, a slight bending or turning
of the slender stalk brings the pollen mass into position for
reaching the stigma. The discs in ordinary flowers of
Habenaria ciliaris are about a line and a half apart (the
English line is the twelfth part of an inch), the slender spur
an inch long, from which somewhat of the structure and size

of the insect adapted to the work in hand may be estimated.”

54 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS
14. RAGGED ORCHIS
Habenaria lacera (Michx.) R. Br. (Plate XXV., Fig. 1.)

THEsE fantastically cut and slashed blossoms that make
a greenish-yellow maze on the slender stem of their species
deserve a better name than Ragged Orchis. The English
writer Sweet calls it the Torn-flowered Habenaria, and
describes it as being “elegantly jagged” in appearance.

It is a small plant from one to two feet high, bearing
leaves that grow smaller as they climb the stem, and a loose
spike of flowers from two to six inches long. But the indi-
vidual flowers—could any one conceive anything more
remarkable than the way in which this lip, not more than an
inch long, is cut and slashed and divided? First it is
parted in three main segments, and these again are divided,
and notched and slit, till it is hopeless to follow the law of
their fashioning.

Asa Gray thinks that the orchid must be very fascinating
to insects, for he says that the pollen masses are generally
removed from older flowers and the stigmas fertilised.
But Mr. Gibson, in a pencilled note made on this sketch
some twenty years ago, when he first began to watch the
ways of the orchids, hints that even lesser intelligences than
Asa Gray’s believed the orchid to be attractive to insects.
He writes: “Found also on above, among flowers, a smooth
caterpillar, pale green, that had formed a screen of the
fringed petals, with meshes of a web exactly counterfeiting
the colour and size of the fringe; also a pure white spider

HABENARIA 55

precisely resembling the fringed petals with its long legs.”
Did the spider not know by experience that it could weave
a web to good advantage where the insects come so gladly;
and did the caterpillar know by that accumulated experience
of his progenitors that constitute instinct that the colour
of the orchid’s delicately screening fringe matched his own
juicy skin and protected him from the birds that might
be snapping insects around this attractive shrine? Who can
tell? No one, unless he will sit in the woods’ secret places
and watch and watch until the actual doings of the tiny
things are revealed. Could Thoreau have had the eyes and
pen of Mr. Gibson he would have suggested philosophies
enough to us to even allow insects a theology.

But what the insect does is this. He creeps up the fringe
straight to the middle of the blossom, for as Gray says,
“The nectary can be approached only from the front, the
sides being guarded by a broad, thick shield on each side—
the arms of the stigma much developed—above supporting
the anther, while its inner and concave face bears the re-
markably long and narrow viscid discs. Posteriorly on its
upper margin a sort of cellular crest is developed.” These
discs are in just the right position to receive the pollen
masses as they come in borne on the head of an insect, who
has been obliged to dive head first straight into the first
flower he visited, and who now must enter again in the same
way with his burden. Just as in so many other orchids, the
pollen masses, as soon as they are withdrawn from the

anther above, are depressed into just the right position to

56 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

touch the stigma, so in this they lie poised on the bee’s head
in such a position that as he plunges in to take a drink the

pollen masses strike and stick to the stigma.

15. PRAIRIE WHITE FRINGED ORCHIS
Habenarta leucophea (Nutt.) A. Gray. (Plate XXV., Fig. 2.)

THE western prairies have a white fringed orchis with
fragrant flowers that grows large enough to be almost as
beautiful and conspicuous as the yellow and the other
white fringed orchis. It is a stout plant with an angled,
leafy stem, set with long, clasping, pointed leaves, and it has
a very thick, loosely flowered spike of white blossoms.
These are sometimes tinged with green. They cannot be
mistaken for the other white fringed orchis, for the latter,
Habenaria blephariglottis, has a long, narrow-spined lip,
while the lip of the Prairie White Fringed Orchis spreads like
a three-parted, deeply fringed fan. ‘The same long spur, an
inch or an inch and a half in length, swings from the lip, as
in the Yellow and White Fringed Orchis.

It loves moist prairies and takes its name from the free
lands under the open sky in Western New York and the
Middle States, where it blooms in July

16. LARGE PURPLE FRINGED ORCHIS
Habenaria grandiflora (Bigel.) Torrey. (Plate XXV.,
Figs. 3 and 4.)
Tue Large Purple Fringed Orchis is the most regal and

glorious of all the fringed orchids. One cannot but sym-

Le

Figs. 2 and 3. Single blossom, much enlarged.

Fig. 1. White Fringed Orchis.

XXV. Brossoms or Severat oF THE Dirrerent SPECIES OF THE FRINGED Orcuis,
SHowinG CHARACTERISTIC FRiINGING oF Lip

Fig. 1. Ragged Orchis. Fig. 2. Prairie White Fringed Orchis. Figs. 3 and 4. Large
Purple Fringed Orchis.

HABENARIA 57

pathise with Thoreau, who grumbled because it grew so
abundantly in the Maine woods, where only the moose and
moose hunters could see it, and so rarely in Concord where
philosophers dwelt. It has, however, although freakish in
its habits, a wide range, so that its scarceness in certain
localities may be due to the ruthlessness with which people
who are not philosophers have snatched these long, stately
stalks to put in vases. It grows during June and July in
rich woods and meadows from New Brunswick and Ontario
and Michigan as far south as North Carolina.

It is the tallest and stoutest of all the North American
orchids. Its strong stalk, with clasping sheath above
the fleshy root, is sometimes half an inch in diameter, and
it may grow five feet high, though three or four feet is its
average.

Its several large leaves are oval or lanceolate, from four
to ten inches long and from one to three inches wide. Bald-
win says that he has found them as broad as a man’s hand.
The stalk is deeply grooved and is beribboned with narrow
leaves on its upper half. The magnificent lilac or purple-
pink raceme at its summit has fifteen inches as its greatest
recorded length, but it averages from three to ten inches,
with a diameter of two to three inches and over.

The fragrant fluttering blossoms, with their green pointed
bracts and their long spurs, make a loose feathery spike,
which, as Baldwin says, “suggests a flock of birds struggling
to get foothold on the same branch.”

The characteristic sign of the species is the peculiarly

58 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

beautiful lip which spreads like a fringed fan, with three
divisions. It is from one-half inch to an inch in width.
It is grooved down the centre to form a channel that leads
directly to the opening of the long, slender spur. Over
this opening, and between the small converging petals and
sepals, is the column. The relation of the parts to each
other may be seen by the diagram.

Gray noticed that the two side divisions of the lip “aid in
hindering approach”’ from those directions, while the middle
division offers a convenient landing place in front. The
contracted base of the lip is grooved, or with incurved mar-
gins, the trough leading as a sure guide to the nectary.
The two anther cells are widely separated, but little divergent;
their lower ends projecting strongly forward, bring the naked
discs just into line with the orifice of the nectary.”

If the sharp point of a pencil be thrust between the
fringes down the throat of the nectary and be immediately
withdrawn, it will be found that in the moment’s contact
the two sticky discs have adhered to it, and that the pollen
masses have been withdrawn from the anther sacs. On
holding the pencil still while one slowly counts fifteen or
twenty, it will be seen that the pair of slender stalks that hold
the pollen masses somewhat erect are slowly depressed,
until the pollen masses lie at just the angle that would make
them hit against the broad stigma if the pencil were again
pointed toward the opening of the spur.

The pedicels of the stalks are like minute drums, smaller
than those in Hooker’s Orchid, and if one follows the down-

HABENARIA 59

ward movement of these pollen masses with a watchmaker’s
glass in the eye, it will be possible, perhaps, to see that the
little drums contract on one side and that the depression to

the proper angle is caused by this mechanical device.

17. SMALLER PURPLE FRINGED ORCHIS
FHlabenaria psycodes (L.) A. Gray. (Plate XXVI.)

Tue Smaller Purple Fringed Orchid is the one that brings
the greater delight to flower lovers because it is more readily
found. Its long, slender wand of lavender blossoms, fringed
like the eyelashes of an houri, are found in meadows and
swamps and wet woods all through July and August, from
Newfoundland to North Carolina and from New England
to Indiana.

It is so like the Large Purple Fringed Orchis in every
respect except size, that is has often been taken for the
same species, or at least for a smaller variety, but it has its
own distinctive characteristics. In the first place it is very
slender and fragile in its appearance, and never grows more
than three feet high. Its leaves are strong and stout and
smooth, with a heavy midrib, but narrower and more
lanceolate than those of the Larger Fringed Orchis. They
clasp the square purple-mottled stem on the lower half,
completely, passing into shorter bract-like leaves above, as
in all the other fringed orchids.

The flower raceme is much shorter and narrower than in

the Large Purple Fringed Orchis. It is generally two to

60 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

four inches in length, but may reach six inches, and is rarely
more than an inch and a half thick. The slender twisted
ovaries hold the blossoms face outward, with their exquisitely
fringed petals rising, tier above tier, in a lavender mist.
The incurved bracts and the recurved spurs make a series
of airy curves seen through the lilac fringes, and the whole
effect is of a paler, more delicately fashioned and lovelier
flower than the more splendid Large Purple Fringed Orchis.
The inch-measure test is a matter-of-fact one to apply in
distinguishing these two fringed orchis from one another,
but it never fails, for the three-parted fringed lip is never
more than one-third to half an inch wide in the smaller plant,
while the lip of the Large Purple Fringed Orchis is three
times that size. There is also a trifling difference in the
cutting, the segments appearing notched rather than fringed
in the smaller, while they are split into anther-like fringes
for quite half their length in the Large Purple Fringed
Orchis. Twenty years ago Mr. Gibson made for “ Highways
and Byways”’ an illustration of the Smaller Purple Fringed
Orchis tangled in a spider-web and receiving the visit of a
moth, and wrote of it as follows:

“The life history of this flower, as it has been revealed to
me through recent observations of my own, is of such ab-
sorbing interest that I am tempted into a narrative of my
investigations. They were the outcome of an intent perusal
of Darwin’s wonderful discoveries chronicled in his ‘Fer-
tilisation of Orchids.’ This book led me with feverish

impulse into the conservatory and field. Like many

yy NEW ROOTLET,

NEW Root,

XXVI. Smarter Purpte Frincep Orcuis

Fig. 1. Stem and basal leaf. Fig. 2. Flower stalk. Fig. 3. Parts of single flower
magnified.

XXVIT
Fig. 2. Characteristic shape of lip.

Fig. 1. Fringeless Purple Orchis.

HABENARIA 61

flowers, this little fringed orchid is constructed on a principle
of reciprocity. The insects serve the plant and the plant
yields them food in return. Let us examine the structure,
which will be readily understood by reference to the dia-
grams. In this instance the bait consists of the usual sweet
secretion, here deposited at the end of a curved tubular
nectary, nearly an inch in length. The opening to this
nectary is seen directly in the heart of the flower. But
observe how that entrance is guarded—defended with two
clubs, if I may so speak, the pollen masses bearing some.
such resemblance. These are hidden in two pockets, one
on each side of the opening. The lower extremity of each
is provided with a flat, sticky disc, turned inward. This is
all very simple. The trap is set. Now let us see how it
works. A small brown hawk-moth hovers near; he poises
like a humming-bird in front of the blossom, uncoils his
slender tongue and thrusts it into the opening of the nectary.
So transparent is this tiny tube that you can readily see, not
only the tongue within but the gradual absorption of the
nectar. As the moth thus sips he brings his tongue in
contact with one or both of the sticky discs. They clasp it
firmly and, as the member is withdrawn, they are pulled out
of their pockets (see Plate XXVI., Fig. 4). This alone is
surprising, but what follows is stranger still. In a very
few seconds the little club begins to sink forward, gradually
lowering, until it has brought itself nearly level with the
tongue. Wilted, you will imagine. Not so; it is still firm

in its new position. And what will be your surprise, if you

62 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

watch closely as the humming rover sips from the next
flower, on seeing the tip of that club so tilted, strike directly
against the stigma, or fertilising surface, just above the
opening of the nectary! The flower is thus fertilised and
will mature its seeds.

“The flowers are frequented by several kinds of flying
insects, but this little day-flying sphinx is one of the most
common insects, and the very conformation of the orchid
would indicate, from its slender tube and the distance of the
nectar from the orifice, an adaptation to the long, slender
tongues of moths and butterflies. I have never happened to
see a bee upon this orchid, and I doubt whether the insect
could reach the nectar, unless, perhaps, through the
external puncture of some bumblebee, which insect
has a wellknown trick of cutting matters short and
saving itself trouble by biting through the honey tube from
the outside.

“These experiments with the orchid may be tried by
any one. The drawings herewith given were made from
an actual specimen of the insect, which suffered martyrdom
in the cause. You may observe the appearance of an
insect’s tongue after searching a few nectaries. It was
interesting also to notice the sagacity of a diminutive spider
that seemed to know the attraction of these honey tubes, and
had spread its web among the blossoms. Its meshes were
sprinkled with minute insects, among which I discovered one
rash atom with a club-shaped appendage as large as its
body firmly attached to the top of its head.”

HABENARIA 63

18. FRINGELESS PURPLE ORCHIS
Habenaria peramoena, A. Gray. (Plate XXVII.)

Ir is sometimes a comfort to the lover of flowers, who
vainly seeks to know them by name, to find some one
distinctive feature by which he can quickly identify the
new flower that has made his walk an experience to be
remembered. In the bother of mentally calculating
whether a certain specimen of purple-fringed orchis is
a large specimen of H. psycodes, or a small one of H.
grandiflora, one is distracted from an enjoyment of its
beauty, and is tempted to feel a trifle of impatience at
the naming of names, and to wish one were back in the
Garden of Eden, where, according to the little boy’s version,
“Adam called the elephant an elephant because it looked
like an elephant.”

But with the Fringeless Purple Orchis it is different.
One knows at once that because it has a long two- to seven-
inch spike of purple flowers that are not fringed on their
wide-spreading, deeply lobed lips, it is Blephariglottis
peramoena. In every other way it looks like the other two
purple Habenarias. Its long lower leaves are elliptical or
lanceolate. Its stem is from one to two and a half feet
high. Its flowers are violet-purple, arranged in a spike,
which is about two inches in diameter. There are sometimes
only a few, as in the illustration, but usually when growing
in fertile grounds, they are crowded on a long seven-inch
spike. This one feature, however, is its own. The fan-shaped

64 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

three-parted lip is only a little cut or notched on its edges;
and has no fringe.

The inner workings of this orchid are as complex and
wonderful as those of its fringed sisters and will prove as
interesting to study as they. It grows in moist meadows
all over the Eastern States from New Jersey to Virginia
and Kentucky, and as far west as Illinois, and blossoms in

July and August.

; ‘rayiue pasuny pur
dry paaoosd ‘Ariey Sutmoys ‘etuosog pafioy ay jo fteiaq ‘7 -8rq -zeyyue paduny jo perp yt ‘diy Asrey Butamoys ‘eruodog asoy jo surossopg +1 “Sty

TITAXX

ANU

XXIX. Rose Poconia

IV
POGONIA
(Plate XXVIII.)

As onE plunges into a swamp, still with the heat of June,
or into the marshy borders of an Adirondack lake, where a
host of shimmering sedges and feathery grasses lure one
into the belief that the sphagnum bed is solid earth, there will
surely be found, growing with the deep rose-pink blossom of
Limodorum (Calopogon), a flower of paler rose, and with a
fringed and bearded lip. It is the Rose Pogonia or Snake
Mouth. It serves as a type of the Pogonia, a genus of
thirty species that are scattered over the world, and five
of which grow in North America.

The name is derived from a Greek word meaning a
beard, referring to the hairy crest on the lip.

The Pogonias are low; small, grass-like plants rarely
growing more than a foot in height, and scantily leaved. As
a rule the blossoms grow singly, and are large and showily
coloured, poised delicately on the stalk that swings as lightly
and securely as the grasses.

The absence of a spur, and the bristly beard of hairs
on the gaily tinted and notched or lobed lip is characteristic
of the Pogonias as well as of the closely related Arethusa,

65

66 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

but the Pogonias are distinguished by the fact that their
sepals and petals are separate, and that the long club-shaped
column is free from the lip, while in Arethusa the sepals
and petals are joined at the base and the column adheres to
the lip.

The anther has two parallel sacs, each containing a mass
of powdery pollen grains, to which no stalk is attached
(Plate XXVIII., Figs. 1 and 2). Over them is fitted a cap or
lid that springs back when an insect presses against it in the
right way. The stigma, a flattened disc, lies under the
anther. The method by which fertilisation takes place in
the Pogonias, as well as in Arethusa, is described by Mr.
Gibson on page 79.

The capsule stands erect, and is long and slender and
strongly angled.

The Pogonias and the Arethusa, under which latter name
they were formerly classed, form a group to stir the imagin-
ation of a philosopher, but not while he is trying the staying
powers of a sphagnum bed. Before donning rubber boots
to seek these marsh-loving plants, it will interest him to know
that Darwin made the group Arethusa a subject of special
study, with reference to their special adaptations to cross
fertilisation. It would seem as though with them, as with
the maidens of royal families, it was more necessary to make
elaborate preparations for a suitor than with the commoner
flowers, which like the commoner people, have no fear that
their families may die out for want of offspring.

One of the inhabitants of Australia has a curved feathered

POGONIA 67

lip, which, the moment an insect lights on it, shuts up like
a spring against the anthers, carrying the insect into a
little prison formed of the petals and a sepal, that arch in a
hood over the column. This stays closed for about half
an hour, before it opens to set him free, so that whether or not
he finds nectar to beguile his stay, he cannot escape until he
has become well smeared with pollen to take to the next
flower.

The aromatic pod from which vanilla is derived is the
fruit of an orchid belonging to this group. It is a native
of South America, but is transplanted by growers to foreign
countries, where it blooms profusely, secretes plenty of nectar,
but never sets the valuable pods, unless the planters deliber-
ately transfer the pollen from one plant to another Either
the insects are not adapted in size, or length of tongue, or
they do not crawl in and out in just the right way to carry
off the pollen, or else they do not care to try the foreign
nectar. Possibly the nectar may have the same effect on the
unaccustomed insect that was observed when a British bee
was formally invited to enter a hothouse orchid from
Guatemala that closely resembled the vanilla orchid. He
pushed his way in, sipped the nectar, backed out and
keeled over on the labellum, where he lay with legs stretched
out, as if dead. By-and-by he recovered, but doubtless
with sufficient experience to warn him against any further
attempt at satisfying his hunger with such intoxicating
cordial, and incidentally cross fertilising that particular

species of foreign orchid.

68 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

Another British cousin that Darwin experimented with
plainly shows by its actions that it fears that insect services
could not be relied on as completely as some thousands of
years gone by, for it has become adapted to fertilise itself.
The anther opens while the flower is in bud and pushes the
pollen partly out, and then, before there is the slightest
chance for an insect to come in, the pollen sends out long
tubes toward the stigma that penetrate its tissue and begin to
fertilise the ovules. Then the welcome to the insects is
extended, purely as a formal courtesy, it would appear, for
the pollen mass is balanced in such a way as though
it might fall at the slightest touch, exactly on its own
stigma.

To Darwin, who was studying the orchids to prove the
theory of cross fertilisation against that of self fertilisation, this
orchid’s vagary seemed a startling exception, especially when
he covered four blossoms with a net while they were still
in bud, and saw them open, and without the aid of any
insect produce capsules that looked as fine as any growing
free. But on weighing the seeds of the capsules of the covered
plants he found that they weighed more than one-third less
than those from an equal number of capsules on uncovered
plants. Moreover, under the microscope he discovered
that the self-fertilised capsules had seven times as many
bad seeds as those that were fertilised by the insects in the
garden, proving that cross fertilisation did take place, but
that the orchid had prepared itself for self fertilisation in an

emergency.

POGONIA 69

Of the thirty species of Pogonia, widely distributed over the
world, only the following five are found in North America:

KEY TO THE SPECIES OF POGONIA

Sepals and petals nearly equal and
alike.
Lip crested and fringed, flowers
rose colour, solitary or in pairs. 1. Rose Pogonia.

Lip not crested, several pale
purple flowers on drooping
flower stalks. 2. Nodding Pogonia.

Sepals longer and narrower than the
petals.
Stem with single leaf near the
middle, and bract near the
flower; flesh-coloured petals
with purple-veined crested lip. 3. Spreading Pogonia.

Stem with whorl of five leaves at
the summit.
Sepals one and one-half to two
inches long, wide spreading,
dark purple. Flower soli-
tary, greenish yellow. 4. Whorled Pogonia.

Sepals only a trifle longer than
petals, two or sometimes
one flower above whorl of
leaves. 5. Small Whorled Pogonia.

.

1. ROSE POGONIA, OR sNAKE-MOUTH
Pogonta ophioglossoides (L.) Ker. (Plate XXIX.)

THE Rose Pogonia is a slender plant, springing from
a. fibrous root. It grows about a foot in height, with two
or three leaves and a single flower that smells, some say,

70 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

like sweet violets. A pencilled note in Mr. Gibson’s sketch
says, “Odour of red raspberries,’ but the fragrance disap-
pears and gives place to a peculiar faint disagreeable odour
when the flower withers. The name is derived from the
Greek words meaning snake and mouth.

The leaves are oval lanceolate, three inches long at the
most; the lower one has a slender stem, but the others rise
from the stalk. At the summit of this smooth, round, grass-
like stalk is a strongly ribbed green leaf-like bract, from
which springs the solitary flower, or very occasionally two.
It is of a warm but delicate pure rose pink, with sepals and
petals nearly equal, and almost an inch long.

The deeply fringed and drooping lip has a raised and
rounded cushion in the centre, which is thickly crested at
the lower part with white and yellow bristles. The whole
flower, including the column, is bent almost at a right angle
to the three-angled deeply ribbed ovary, so that it appears
to nod upon its stalk.

The contrivance to protect this orchid from fertilising
itself and to insure cross fertilisation is very interesting
(Plate XXVIII., Fig. 1).

The column lies almost horizontal, and projects over the
fringed lip in such a way that when an insect lights on its
crested ridge and crawls unevenly through the stout hairs it
would strike its head and back first against the anther lid,
which fits like the hinged lid of a box, and which is pressed
down tightly by the insect entrance, and then against the
surface of the stigma which lies directly under the anther.

POGONIA 71

There is no thoroughfare in this orchid, and no space to turn
around, so that the insect is obliged to back out, and in so
doing he catches his head on a little rim of the anther lid that
grows there on purpose, and immediately the disc that
covered the pollen springs back like the lid of a watch, leaving
the pollen masses exposed in a little grooved opening, in such
a way that the insect must receive them on his head. It
seems quite possible that the heavy beard of bristles on the
lip adds just the touch of difficulty in the path of his retreat
to cause him to tiptoe awkwardly backward and insure his
stumbling against the rim on the lid in just the right way to
open it. The moment the insect has withdrawn, the lid
closes with a snap and shuts in for another insect any of
the pollen mass that was not carried away. That which
adheres to the first visitor’s head is carried straight against
the flat, round stigma of the next flower it visits.

The Rose Pogonia grows in meadows and swamps
through Canada, all the way from Newfoundland and
Ontario, across the continent and as far south as Florida on
the coast and Kansas in the Midland States. It also grows
in Japan, but as far as we know in no other part of the
world. It is overwhelming to think that before the Pacific
Ocean knew its present bounds, in that dim age when no sea
separated the coast of Japan from our shores—that then
this rose-pink blossom grew, perhaps profusely, as became
the presiding flower families which were then among the
monocotyledons, as profusely as the daisies and golden-rod
of to-day; and that since Japan has become an island

72 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

garden, this plant, so widely separated in space, has gone
on reproducing itself there and here without variation,

through zons of time.

2. NODDING POGONIA, OR THREE BIRDS
Pogonta trianthophora (Sw.) B.S. P. (Plate XXX.)

ForMERLY called Pogonia pendula, as descriptive of the
drooping flowers.

A delicate, feeble-looking little orchid is this Pogonia,
with its small scattered leaves and its drooping, fluttering,
pinkish blossoms that average about three on the stalk and
give it the native rustic name “Three Birds.”

Its smooth, slender stem grows from three to eight
inches high, though six inches 1s its usual height. It springs
from a fleshy root and bears from two to eight very small
ovate leaves, a half, or at the very most, three-quarters of an
inch long. They grow alternately on the crooked curving
stalk and clasp it all the way around. From the axils of the
upper leaves the flowers grow on slender stalks that at
first stand erect but soon droop like a fuchsia. There may
be only one blossom and occasionally as many as seven, but
the usual number is three or four.

The blossoms themselves are of that faint rose colour
that the botanists call purple, fading to white, and are
slightly fragrant. The sepals and petals are all the same
colour and about equal in length, from a half to nearly three-
quarters of an inch long. They are elliptical with rounded

XXX. Noppinc Poconia, or Turee Birps

XXXI. SpreapinGc Poconia

POGONIA 73

ends, and they converge a little at the tips. The tip hangs
broader at the end and is notched and cleft to suggest an
attempt at becoming three-lobed. It has no crest or beard,
but has three tiny green lines which may possibly secrete
nectar.

Just how this blossom attracts insects, and which these
are, is not known. Its anther and stigma are so small that
it is difficult to see the hinged lids that open and shut to let
the pollen out, but what we know of the persistency of

family habits makes us sure that the existence of this plant
depends on a well-established connection with some insect

visitor.

This Pogonia is the latest one of the summer, as it does
not begin to flower until August and lasts through Septem-
ber. It grows in swamps and in moist, damp woods, but
is not as common in the New England States as it is in the
South. In North Carolina it blooms in the valleys and
climbs the mountains to a height of 3,500 feet, and it is very

much at home in Florida.
3. SPREADING POGONIA
Pogonia divaricata (L.) R. Br. (Plate XXXI.)

THE Spreading Pogonia, with its solitary bracted inch-
long flower at the summit of a tall slender stem, looks at first
glance much like the Snake-mouth previously described, but
it lacks the beard on the crested lip that is characteristic of
Pogonia ophioglossoides, and has several other distinguishing

features.

74 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

It springs from a fibrous root, and in height it is much
the same, but may grow to two feet. Instead of two or three
leaves, it has but one—narrow, long and blunt pointed—
that clasps the stalk, and that is from two to four inches in
length.

The flower nods, but is not so much at right angles to the
stem as the Snake-mouth, for the sepals spread widely and
stand up more stiffly, and are the characteristic sign of the
species that gives it the name “spreading.”

They are very narrow, darker in colour and longer than
the flesh-coloured petals. The lip is the same length as the
other two petals, but instead of being narrow and pointed at
the tips as they are, it is broader, three-lobed, with a wavy
margin and a longer lobe in the centre, and is greenish with
fine purple veins. It has a crest in the middle, but no beard.

The anther sacs that lie on each side of the shield and
just in front of the stigma have a hinged cup at the end that
lifts like a lid with toothed edges that helps to hold the pol-
len in.

This Pogonia is a Southern species that has never ven-
tured farther north than the swamps in southern New
Jersey. It ascends to 4,000 feet in North Carolina and

grows in Florida. It blossoms in July.
4. WHORLED POGONIA

Pogonia verticillata (Willd.) Nutt. (Plate XXXII.)

THERE are two Whorled Pogonias which may be instantly
distinguished from the other Pogonias by the circle of five

XXXII. Wuorrep Poconia

fi

)

XXXITI. Smarter WHorRLED Poconia

POGONIA ras

leaves that stand stiffly at the summit of the stem beneath the
blossom; and from each other by the fact that Pogonia ver-
ticillata has very long, narrow sepals, while Pogonta affinis
has sepals barely, if any longer than the petals.

Pogonta verticillata (Plate XXXII.) has long, fibrous roots:
and grows nearly a foot high. The leaves of the whorl are
from one to three inches long, and spring directly from the
stem without leaf stalks; they are obovate and abruptly
pointed. From their midst rises the flower stalk, erect in
the bud, but drooping in the flower, and longer than the
capsule when it is ripe.

The sepals, mere dusky, purple straps, growing from
one and a half to two inches long, give the blossom a wild,
twisted, fantastic appearance, but they are not vivid enough
to make it striking, for the petals are also inconspicuous,
being narrow and greenish and only a quarter of the length
of the sepals. Some botanists have described the flower as
yellow with brownish sepals; but the green predominates.

The lip (Plate XII., Fig. 2) is exquisitely modelled, with
a three-lobed wavy margin and upturned edges that form a
narrow trough leading straight to the anther cells. The
passage through which an insect must walk is over a long,
roughened, narrow crest. Perhaps he prefers t» walk up
one side or the other and thus crawl in obliquely and touch
off the spring cap of the anther cells. Whichever is the
insect that fertilises this rather rare and fastidious orchid, he
generally finds enough work to keep him busy transferring

the powdery pollen masses, for as a rule the plants grow in a

76 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

little colony, and when one is fortunate enough to come
across one in a damp wood or swamp, or possibly in a dry
wood, one is apt to find a host of them. They are qften
found in the company of Medeola, a member of the Lily-of
the-Valley family that has a whorl of leaves closely resem
bling this orchid’s leaves. The dwarf cornel leaves also look
similar, but after the flower has passed, the orchid may be
recognised by its single capsule with its many seeds, while
the dwarf cornel wears the familiar scarlet “ bunchberries,”’
and the Medeola beautiful, blue-purple berries. Its range
is from Southern New England to Minnesota, and south-
ward, and its blossoming time is May and June, but its
tendency, like that of the other Pogonias, is toward the
warmer climate, for it has not been reported, we think, from

Maine or New Hampshire or Vermont.

5. SMALLER WHORLED POGONIA
Pogonia affinis, Austin. (Plate XXXIII.)

Turis orchid is truly a rarity. The Smaller Whorled
Orchid has been found so seldom in our moist woods of
southern New York and New Jersey as to make us feel as
though we were holding some Southern bird in forced cap-
tivity in insisting on keeping it within the printed lists of our
flora. Whether its seeds have travelled north from its more
congenial clime by accident, or whether our few specimens —
are lingering in a climate that has become too severe, we
cannot say; but certain it is, if it be a feat to find the Pogonia

POGONIA a)

verticillata, it is worth a letter to the state botanist to report
Pogonia affinis, for the last published word of science is that
“the species 1s imperfectly known either here or elsewhere.”

The foregoing description of Pogonta verticillata would
answer for it, if reduced by one-third as far as size is con-
cerned, but there are several points of difference. The
flowers, which are sometimes two instead of one, are greenish
yellow and have a short flower stalk, never over a third of an
inch in length, and the narrow sepals, instead of flying like
stiff dark ribbons, are as short, or but a trifle longer than
the petals. ;

Of its insect visitors and its mechanical anther lids we
cannot speak, for it is so rare that the illustration had to be
made from the pressed specimen found and named by Mr.
Austin.

V
ARETHUSA
Arethusa bulbosa L. (Plate XXXIV.)

One of the most charming of the spring flowers that flut-
ters on its grass-like stem over cranberry bogs and Adiron-
dack swamps and salt marshes is the nymph-named
Arethusa, a rose-purple blossom that at first looks very like
the Snake-mouth.

By plucking the plant from its wet sphagnum bed, it will
be seen that it grows from a small bulb instead of from a
fibrous root, whence its name, bulbosa. Its sheathed stem is
low, sometimes only five and at most ten or twelve inches
high, and has a single, long, grass-like leaf that may grow
six inches in length after the flowering time has passed. ‘The
flower is large for the length of its stalk, sometimes growing
two inches long. It is not bent over as much as the Snake-
mouth, but the arching of one sepal and two petals over the
column gives it a characteristic poise. The other sepals
that are long and narrow, like the arched one, are recurved
and spreading, and the lip, that curiously decked banner
that is the honey signal to the insects, drops to the breeze a
broad, round, fringed and notched banner covered with pur-

ple blotches and ridged with three crests of fine white hairs.
8
/

ARETHUSA 79

Under the crimson-purple canopy the column is spread
out like a petal, and covers the anther, which in turn lies
directly over and projects beyond the stigma, in such a way
that the pollen could no more fall upon it than could a
sticky pop-corn ball fall and adhere to the under side of the
shelf it was lying on. The anther projects like a pointed hel-
met beyond the stigma, and remains tightly closed, holding
under it four little loose soft pellets of pollen, two in each cell.
The bee that creeps along the hairy channels that lead to the
nectar in the orchid’s cup pries the pointed cap off as he is
backing out of the flower, and immediately it springs up on
a hinge and the pollen masses are caught in the hairs of his
head, and are soon deposited upon the stigma of another
flower as he creeps under it to get to the nectar.

In Plate XXXIV., Fig. 2, the mechanism of this plan is
shown. In 4 the cap of the anther is closed, and as the bee
advances to thrust his tongue into the nectar sac, he seems to
press the edge of the anther inward and thus keep it even
more effectually closed.

“As the bee retires, the backward motion opens the lid,
and the sticky pollen is thus brought against the insect’s
back, where it adheres in a solid mass. He now flies to the
next Arethusa blossom, enters it as before, and in retiring
slides his back against the receptive viscid stigma, which
retains a portion of the pollen, and thus effects the cross
fertilisation. Professor Gray surmised that the pollen was
withdrawn on the insect’s head, and it might be so withdrawn,
but in other allied orchids of the tribe Arethusa, in which

80 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

the structure is very similar, the pollen is deposited on the
thorax, and such is probably the case in this species. In
either case cross fertilisation would be effected. Nothing
else is possible in the flower, and whether it is Bormbus or not
that effects it, the method is sufficiently evident.”

Mr. Gibson says: “I have never happened to observe an
insect at work upon this flower, but the intention of its
structure is so plain that by a mere examination we may
safely prophesy, not only what must happen when the insect
seeks its nectar, but with equal assurance the kind of insect
thus invited and expected. The column is here quite elon-
gated, forked at the tip, the space between the forks occu-
pied by the anther, which is hinged to the upper division.
This anther lid is closed tightly, with the sticky mass of
pollen hidden behind it in the cavity. The stigma is on the
external inner side of the lower division, and thus distinctly
separated from the pollen. The lip is extended forward as
a hospitable threshold for the insect. And to what insect
might we assume this invitation of colour, fragrance, nectar
and threshold to be extended?

“Let us consider the flower simply as a device to insure
its own cross fertilisation. The insect is welcomed; it must
alight and sip the nectar; in departing it must bear away
this pollen upon its body, and convey it to the next Arethusa
blossom which it visits, and leave it upon its stigma. These
are the conditions expressed; and how admirably they are
fulfilled we may observe when we examine flower after
flower of a group, and find their nectaries drained, their

XXXIV
Fig. 1. Arethusa. Fig. 2. Anther and stigma.

XXXV. HEeELiesorine

Fig. 1. Flower stalk. Figs. 2. and 3. View of the blossom, with sepals and petals (lip
excepted) removed to show pollen masses lying under the anther.

ARETHUSA 81

anther cells empty, and pollen upon their stigmas. The
nectar is here secreted in a well—not very deep—and the
depth of this nectar from the entrance is of great significance
among all the flowers, having distinct reference to the length
of the tongue which is expected to sip it. In the Arethusa,
it is true, the butterfly or moth might sip at the throat of the
flower, but the long tongues of these insects might permit the
nectary to be drained without bringing their bodies in con-
tact with the stigma. Smaller insects might creep into the
nectary and sip without the intended fulfilment.

“Tt is clear that to neither of such visitors is the welcome
extended. What, then, are the required conditions? The
insect must have a tongue of such a length that, when in the
act of sipping, its head must pass beyond the anther well
into the opening of the flower. Its body must be sufficiently
large to come in contact with the anther. Such requisites
are perfectly fulfilled by the humblebee, and we may well
hazard the prophecy that the Bombus is the welcome affinity
of the flower.”

On some parts of the northern New England seacoast
the marshes are purple tinted in June with the blossoms of
Arethusa, but while the artist is revelling in the mass of
colour, the little artisans are clumsily but skilfully buzzing
from flower to flower, snapping open the treasure boxes and
transferring the hoards from one to another, until, after the
brief season of riotous colour and sweetest perfume, every

flower has been visited and has set its seed.

VI
EPIPACTIS
HELLEBORINE
Epipactis viridiflora (Hoffm.) Reichb. (Plate XXXV.)

OF the ten species of Epipactis or Helleborine that grow
in Europe only two are found in the United States. One
grows in the Western States, and one in the East. The
Eastern species is Epipactis viridiflora. It is common in
Europe, but so rare in this country that it has been reported
only from near Toronto in Ontario, and from Syracuse and
Buffalo in New York.

It must always be remembered, however, when a flower
is reported from very few places, that the writers of manuals
take their localities only from reliable printed florz of states,
or from herbarium specimens. ‘Therefore, unless a botanist
has noticed it, it cannot technically exist. Doubtless there
are waste places of beauty the whole country over where the
Helleborine may grow with no one to notice it save hunters
or fishermen. ‘That it is found near large cities means rather
that botanists live in the cities and journey on holidays a
little way forth in the country with their botany boxes, and
collect the nearest specimens, and not that it has a special

tendency to haunt the homes of men.

82

EPIPACTIS 83

Doubtless its leaves may have often been mistaken by
the novice for the leaves of Hellebore; for the tall, stout stem
of Epipactis, with its ovate clasping leaves, sometimes looks
at first glance like this common herb. Its scientific name,
Epipactis, means Hellebore in Greek, and for lack of a
scientific eye, and a more distinctive name, it may grow in
many places unknown to botanists.

The genus Epipactis belongs to the same group as
Peramium, Gyrostachis and Listera. It was a genus that
Darwin loved to watch, and one on which the great authority
on cross fertilisation, Dr. H. Muller, wrote a memoir.

The European species that most nearly resembles our
rare American Helleborine is Epipactis latiflora, in fact, ours
was once called variety viridiflora, of that species; there-
fore the best idea we can get of the mechanism of the pollen
and stigma is from Darwin’s description of Epipactis lattfolia.

It is necessary to tear off the petals and sepals and leave
only the jointed hanging lip to see just how the column lies.

In Plate XXXV., Figs. 2 and 3, a, as seen in the front
view as well as the side view, projects well forward, and
contains two pollen masses on its under side. Beneath it,
with the sticky surface undermost, lies the stigma (s). The
beak or rostellum is formed like a round knob, and projects
beyond the stigma and underneath the anther. This knob
is covered on its upper side with such a tender membrane
that Darwin found he could prick it through with a human
hair, and that when he did so, or even without provocation,
a slight viscid milk would ooze out, which would render the

84 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

upper surface of the knob very sticky. He also found that
the whole knob or rostellum would come off if it were shoved
very slightly upward and backward, and that its under side
was also adhesive, and would dry fast to anything to which it
stuck.

He examined flowers while still in the bud, and found
that, before the flower expands the anther opens, and exposes
the pollen masses.

These lie in round grains that stick together in fours.
Each group of four is tied around by a fine elastic thread,
and the sum total of all the threads is collected into a bundle
that looks, under a magnifying glass, like a brown spot in
front of the pollen. It is this bundle or knot of threads that
becomes pressed against the knobby rostellum in the bud,
the moment the anther opens. It sticks fast, and anything
that will remove the rostellum will naturally pull the pollen
masses out of their sockets in the anther.

As the flowers stand out almost horizontally from the
stem, the curiously shaped lip hangs out invitingly. The
lower portion of it is rounded into a pouch in which the
nectar lies, and the lip end is hinged and forms a landing
place for insects.

As the insect alights on this porch or clings to its swinging
hinged tip, he bends down into the honey cup and takes his
fill, then flying out and upward, his head strikes the sticky
under surface of the knob-like rostellum and drags off the
cap, to the upper surface of which the pollen is adhering.

His observation of the insect visitors to Epipactis latifolia

EPIPACTIS 85

Darwin describes thus: “As some plants grew close to my
house, I have been able to observe here and elsewhere their
manner of fertilisation during several years. Although live
bees and bumblebees of many kinds were constantly flying
over the plants, I never saw a bee or any Dipterous insect
visit the flowers; but in Germany Sprengel caught a fly
with the pollinia of this plant attached to its back. On the
other hand, I have repeatedly observed the common wasp
(Vespa sylvestris) sucking the nectar out of the open cup-
shaped labellum. I thus saw the act of fertilisation affected
by the pollen masses being removed by wasps, and afterward
carried attached to their foreheads to other flowers.

It is remarkable that the sweet nectar of this Epipactis
should not be attractive to any kind of bee. If wasps were
to become extinct in any district, so probably would the
Eptipactis latifolia.”

Possibly the scarcity of our American species, Epipactis
viridiflora, is due to the fact that its own particular insect
servitor has grown more scarce. Hive bees visit another
English species of Epipactis, for Darwin’s son, William, saw
them in the Isle of Wight visiting about a score of flowers,
and many of them had pollen masses attached to their fore-
heads. He also noticed that the elastic character of the
hinged lip which tended to spring up as the bees left the
flowers seemed to make the bees fly upward in such a way
as to strike against the knob of the rostellum. Darwin
asked a friend to try an experiment to see whether this

hinged lip was an advantage to the flower; accordingly

86 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

eight specimens were selected and marked, and the jointed
parts of the lip removed. The result was that only two out
of the eight bore as many seeds as the unmutilated flowers
on the same stalk and six capsules contained fewer seeds.
In another experiment, three out of eleven mutilated flowers
setno seed. These experiments would seem to show that the
elastic upspringing of the lip was of advantage to the flower.

Whoever would seek Epipactis viridiflora, our one rare
Helleborine that grows in the East, must look for a short
herb with fibrous roots and a simple leafy stem, from one to
two feet high. The leaves are ovate-lanceolate, from one
and one-half to three inches long. They are downy above,
and strongly veined and clasp the stem without a pedicel.

The flowers grow in a leafy-bracted, one-sided raceme
and are greenish yellow or sometimes purple. They are not
quite half an inch long and barely as long as the sharp, narrow
bracts that spring from the base of the flower pedicels. The
flowers stand obliquely erect, and the contracted lip with
its horny cap and hinged, pointed tip stands off at right
angles. All the sepals and petals are separate, and from
their midst the column with its projecting anther is plainly
visible.

Dr. Britton, in his ‘Flora of the Northern States and’

“sometimes confounded

Canada,” notes that this species is
with the European E. Jatifolia, but differs in having the lip
free from callosities, its apex acute, and the sepals and
petals large and more tapering.” It blooms in Juiy and

August.

VII
GYROSTACHYS
LADY’S-TRESSES. (Plate XXXVI.)

THE genus has been until recently called Spiranthes, from
two Greek words, meaning spiral flowers, but the other
Greek name, Gyrostachys, has become adopted, with its
more literal meaning of twisted stalk.

Gyrostachys is a genus with tiny white flowers hardiy
larger than the little single trumpets that go to make up a
head of white clover. But there is no resemblance between
them, except.in the yellowish or greenish tinge of the white
blossoms, for they are arranged on a slender white stalk
which is more or less twisted, giving some plants an appear-
‘ance of the little white blossoms chasing each other around
and around the flower stalk.

The common name of Lady’s-Tresses is rather fanciful,
unless we try to imagine that a bunch of very twisted Gyro-
stachys gractlts looks like a cluster of loose curls.

The plants rise from tuberous or fleshy fibrous roots,
and have narrow leaves springing from the base of the stalk
or growing on its lower portion. If there were any danger
of confusing the white blossoms with those of the Habenarias,
a glance would show that the flowers of the Lady’s-Tresses

87

88 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

have no spur, while all the more common native Habenarias
have a spurred lip.

These sweet-smelling white wands of bee-beloved flowers
are many and beautiful in tropical countries. The genus
numbers eighty species, of which seven grow in our tem-
perate limit. One in the Southern States and another in
California, bring the number up to nine.

The English species furnished Darwin with an elaborate
and minute task in discovering the secrets of their domestic
economy. The flowers are so small and their mechanism
so complex and minute that it required a microscope to
discover the curious shape as well as the actions of the
stigma and anther; but patient experiment revealed a struc-
ture most emphatically adapted to cross fertilisation.

The “Autumnal Spiranthes”’ was the particular Lady’s-
Tresses that Darwin prisoned in nets, and tickled with
bristles to make it disclose its secrets; and having discovered
them, he wrote to Professor Asa Gray, his kindred spirit in
America, and asked him to examine the Lady’s-Tresses that
were familiar to him. Our seer of the woods studied
Gyrostachys (Sptranthes) gracilis and cernua, and found
that they had the same general structure.

If one selects a young flower (Plate XXXVI, Fig. 1), whose
trumpet petals have just blown, and peers into its micro-
scopic depths with a pocket lens, there will be seen a small
dark dot which is the end of a thin tapering beak that
projects like a little shelf over the stigma. Along the middle

of this beak, or rostellum, as it is technically called, lies a

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GYROSTACHYS 89

small ridge. As innocent as the trick egg of a magician is
this minute furrow, but touch it ever so lightly with a fine
bristle, and presto, the beak splits and an elliptical crack
rounds through its length and loosens a little sticky boat-
shaped disc that adheres to the bristle as it is drawn away
(Plate XXXVI, Fig. 3). The column, that is, the whole
apparatus of stigma, anthers and beak, lies so closely pressed
against the lip of the Lady’s-Tresses that a bee alighting on
this threshold cannot stick his proboscis into the honey well
without doing the trick of the bristle, for the slightest touch,
even the irritating vapour of chloroform, will start the split.
Consequently, the bee goes off with a tiny boat glued fast
to his proboscis. ‘This would not mean much, were it not
that long before the flower expands the anther cells, which
are pressed just over the beak or rostellum, open and let
the pollen masses fall right on the boat; so that as the bee
flies away he carries a freighted cargo that has been awaiting
transportation.

Darwin says: “At Torquay, I watched for about half an
hour a number of these flowers growing together, and saw
three kinds of bumblebees visit them. I caught one and
examined its proboscis; on the superior lamina, some little
way from the tip, two perfect pollinia (pollen masses) were
attached, and three other boat-formed discs without pollen;
so that this bee had removed the pollinia from five flowers
and had probably left the pollen of three on the stigmas of
other flowers.”

But is not the bee, as she thrusts her proboscis in beneath

go OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

the column to sip the nectar, to tip the little boat of pollen
that has just stuck to it, right against the stigma of the same
flower? Not in the least, for in the young just-opened
flower the column lies so close to the tip that the bee can
barely force her proboscis through; moreover the stigma is
not sticky, and would not hold the pollen even if the bee
could get it there. But as the flower grows older, the bent
column slowly raises itself from the lip (Plate XXXVI, Fig. 2),
leaving a much wider aperture into which the proboscis can
go far enough to unload the pollen on the surface of the
stigma, which has by this time become sticky. Asa Gray
writes humbly to Darwin, who called his attention to this
widening of the passage, “It is so sticky we wonder how we
overlooked it.”

Stull it may not be quite clear how this widening of the
passage ensures cross fertilisation, for might not the bee
carry the boat-loads of pollen from a young flower to an
older flower on the same spike, and cause self fertilisation ?
We must turn to Darwin again for a simple observation which
gives the key to the situation. He noticed that “the bees
always alighted at the bottom of the spike, and crawling
spirally up it, sucked one flower after another. I believe,”
he adds, “humblebees generally act in this manner when
visiting a dense spike of flowers, as it is the most convenient
method—on the same principle that a woodpecker always
climbs up a tree in search of insects.” This seems an
insignificant observation, but see the result. The bee goes

first to the lowest flower, and crawling spirally up the spike,

GYROSTACHYS gI

effects nothing on the first spike which she visits till she
reaches the upper flowers, and then she withdraws the pollinia
(pollen masses). She soon flies to another plant, and
alighting on the lowest and oldest flower, into which a wide
passage will have been formed from the greater reflexion
of the column, the pollinia strikes the protuberant stigma.
If the stigma of the lowest flower has already been fully
fertilised, little or no pollen will be left on its dried surfacé; but
on the next succeeding flower, of which the stigma is ad-
hesive, large sheets of pollen will be left. Then as soon as
the bee arrives near the summit of the spike she will with-
draw fresh pollinia, will fly to the lower flowers on another
plant, and fertilise them. Thus as she goes her rounds and
adds to her store of honey, she continually fertilises fresh
flowers and perpetuates the race of our autumnal Spiranthes,
which will yield honey to future generations of bees.

KEY TO THE SPECIES OF GYROSTACHYS

Flowers growing in three ranks around
stem; stem not twisted or only
slightly so.
Sepals and petals curving together
to form a little hood. 1. Hooded Lady’s-Tresses.

Lateral sepals standing free and
separate.
Spike short, slender, two inches
long, four or five wide leaves
on stem. 2. Wide-leaved Lady’s-Tresses.

S)

Spike four to six inches long,
plant growing six inches to
two feet; lip with hairy,
straight knobs at base. 3. Nodding Lady’s-Tresses.

g2 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

Stem one to two feet high,
lower leaves very long, upper
ones mere bracts; lip with
smooth, incurved knobs at
base. 4. Fragrant Lady’s-Tresses.

Flowers alternate, but on a twisted
stalk.
Stem leafy, leaves like blades of
grass. 5. Grass-leaved Lady’s-Tresses.

Stem with bracts, basal leaves
‘withering before the flowers
come.
Plant small, five to nine inches
high, spike one inch long. 6. Little Lady’s-Slipper.

Plant slender, basal leaves
ovate, loose spike one to
three inches long, very much
twisted. 7. Slender Lady’s-Tresses.

I, THE HOODED LADY’S-TRESSES
Gyrostach ys Romanzoffiana(Cham.) MacM. (Plate XX XVII.)

From a cluster of tuberous roots a smooth stem, leafy
in its lower part, and bracted above, bears a spike of flowers
two to four inches long. From six to fifteen inches is the
height of this species. The leaves, which are broader at
their upper end than at their long, tapering base, sometimes
grow to be eight inches long, though five is the average
length.

The whitish or greenish flowers grow in three rows
around the stem; they are very small, about a quarter of an
inch long. As the stem is not twisted, they circle it regu-

GYROSTACHYS 93

larly, standing horizontal to it, and making an evenly
flowered wand. The sepals and petals are broad at the
base and curved together to form the little hood that gives the
species its common name. The thin, transparent, veiny lip
is oblong, and contracted near the base without any thickened
protuberances.

The Hooded Lady’s-Tresses has a sweet fragrance of
violets, and is so like the Nodding Lady’s-Tresses that one
is deceived into thinking that one has found this more
northern species, when it is in reality the commoner Nodding
Lady’s-Tresses.

The time of flowering is characteristic, however; July
and August are the months for the Hooded, and the late
autumn for the Nodding Lady’s-Tresses.

It has travelled widely, for it is found in bogs through
Maine and Canada, to Lake Superior and across the con-
tinent, where it ranges from Unalaska south to California and
Colorado. It even climbs mountains to the height of six
‘and eight thousand feet. But though it is found in so many
stations with us, it is a rarity in Europe, appearing only
in a few bogs in Cork County, Ireland, where Grant Allen
says, “The ardour of modern botanists is fast putting an
end to its brief career.”

How did it get there? Professor Gray thought that these
were merely the last lingering stations of a species once
common to both continents, while Grant Allen thinks that
the seeds were “carried across the ocean by chance at some
remote period.” But it could hardly be that this wild,

94 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

shy orchid of our cold bogs should find its way by any return-
ing traveller to just the sort of damp seclusion that it loves.
Moreover, if it had done so, it must have been very long ago,
for when it was first discovered by botanists, it was called
by a different name, for it varies very slightly from our
type, just enough to make it seem that either the Irish or
the American climate had caused a slight evolution from the
common ancestors of both. Strange marvel, that this small
white wand of flowers should point to a half-written page in
the world’s geological history, and that its mere unconscious
presence should illustrate the growth of the slowly shifting

continents.

2. WIDE-LEAVED LADY’S-TRESSES

Gyrostachys plantaginea (Raff.) Britton. (Plate XX XVIII.)

THE small white Lady’s-Tresses, with its broad-bladed,
tapering, clasping leaves, is shorter than any, growing some-
times only four inches, never more than ten in height. Its
minute quarter-inch blossoms coil around the straight,
untwisted stem, and form a very small spike from one to two
inches long and not half an inch wide.

On plucking off a tiny blossom and looking at it with
a magnifying glass, it will be seen, as illustrated (Fig. 3),
that the bracts are very much shorter than the flowers, and
that the petals and velvet sepals are all very narrow and in-
curved at the end. The overhanging lip, pale yellow on its

face, has a rounded margin wavy and crisped, while at its

XXXVII. Hoopep Lapy’s-Tresses

XXXVIII
Fig. 2. Front view of flower, showing shape of lip.
Fig. 3. Side view, showing shape of flower.

Fig. 1. Wide-leaved Ladys’-Tresses.

GYROSTACHYS 95

point of attachment there are no protuberances, but some-
times little thickened places (Figs. 2, 3).

This is the earliest of the Lady’s-Tresses to bloom.
It begins in June and lasts till August, but loves cold, wet
woods and damp meadows in New York and New England.
Its range is from New Brunswick to Minnesota, and south
to Virginia, but seldom, if ever, beyond the Mississippi.

3. NODDING LADY’S-TRESSES
Gyrostachys cernua (L.) Kuntze. (Plate XX XIX.)

Tuis is the most beautiful of our Lady’s-Tresses and the
latest to bloom.

The stalk varies greatly in size, from six inches to two
feet. It is downy in its upper part, and is wrapped by
several pointed bracts. The long, narrow leaves all spring
from the base or near it, and are sometimes more than a foot
long, though they may not exceed three inches in breadth.
They are not so grass-like as in the Grassy Lady’s-Tresses,
being distinctly wider at the end and narrowed into a sort of
leaf stalk above the middle, but as the leaves are apt to
wither away when the flower blooms, it has the appearance
of rising almost bare stalked from the ground.

The spike is four or five inches long and about half
an inch in diameter. The tiny yellowish-white flowers, not
half an inch long, nod on their short-flowered stalks and
climb around the stalk, each third one peering around and

down at the one below it. The sepals at the side are free

96 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

and spreading, but the upper sepal and the two upper petals
are arched over the column (Fig. 2).

The lip, as it stands invitingly below the entrance of the
older flower in the illustration, whose passage is open wide
enough for the bee to carry the pollen masses in, is oblong
and obtusely pointed. It is wavy, crisped around the edge
and has at its base two little callous knobs (Fig. 4).

It is distinctly an October orchid, though it begins to
bloom in August or September. From Nova Scotia to the
Gulf of Mexico, and as far west as the Mississippi it is com-
mon in wet meadows and swamps. When Indian summer
warms the brown meadows and swamps, and those second
adventists, the violets and clover, reappear to mortals before
the summer dies, the Nodding Lady’s-Tresses shine like
slim white ghosts between the grass and sedges, and shed

a faint, sweet almond perfume through the air.

4. THE FRAGRANT LADY’S-TRESSES
Gyrostachys odorata (Nutt.) Kuntze. (Plate XXXIX., Fig. 5.)

Tue fragrant Lady’s-Tresses is not the only one with
a perfume, but it is the one that receives the name odorata
as its characteristic sign.

It strongly resembles the Nodding Lady’s-Tresses
(Plate XXXIX., Fig. 6), but hasa distinguishing characteristic
inthe lip. The little thumbs at the base of the lip, the nipple-
shaped callosities, as the technical botanies called them,
are smooth and incurved in the Fragrant (Fig. 5), instead

GYROSTACHYS 97

of hairy and straight, as in the Nodding Lady’s-Tresses
(Fig. 4), and the lip itself is beautifully pinched and curved
in at the middle (Fig. 5), and very downy above; the leaves
that spring from the base are eight to fifteen inches long,
and narrow, from a two-inch blade with a long leaf stalk that
clasps the stem. The other stem leaves are mere bracts.

The flowering spike is the stoutest and thickest of all
the American species, growing five or six inches long and
averaging three-quarters of an inch in thickness. The thick,
long bracts that grow beneath the yellowish-white flowers
help to lend this effect, for they project beyond them.

The Fragrant Lady’s-Tresses is not found in the North-
ern woods, but grows only from North Carolina to Ken-
tucky, Florida and Louisiana, where in September and
October it haunts the river banks, even growing in the

water.
5. GRASS-LEAVED LADY’ S-TRESSES

Gyrostachys precox (Walt.) Kuntze. (Plate XL.)

A TALL, slim, downy-stemmed Lady’s-Tresses with a
very twisted spike and long grass-like leaves, is the general
impression one gets on plucking the Grass-leaved Lady’s-
Tresses. ‘For more minute description it may be classed
among the very tall members, perhaps it is the tallest, for
although, like the Nodding and the Slender Lady’s-Tresses,
it is generally found from one to two feet in height, yet some

specimens thirty inches high have been found.

98 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

The leaves are the characteristic sign of this species.
They are very long and narrow, and, growing in grassy
places, the flower stalk appears to rise naked among the
grass blades—so closely do the long leaves resemble long
grass. They are from two to twelve inches long, about
the same length as the leaves of the Nodding Lady’s-
Tresses, but in the latter the leaves are apt to be
slightly wider at the tips, while in this species they are
distinctly lance shaped and clasp the stem with long,
sheathing petals.

The spike, which grows from two to eight inches long,
is twisted around and around, so that the flowers grow,
to all appearances, as though they were looking back- -
ward with necks craned. The interrupted appearance
that the twisting gives the spike, is, however, very artistic
as well as characteristic.

The stem bears one rank of flowers that are rather open
in their appearance -and follow the spiral of the much-
twisted stem. At the base of the flowers are leafy bracts as
long as the ovaries. ‘The flowers are white or yellowish and
about one-third of an inch long (Fig. 2). Their lateral
sepals are free, but the upper one converges with the two
upper petals. The lip is about a quarter of an inch long and
spreads out a little at the bottom, and is slightly contracted
above. The margin is loosely wavy and there are dark
stripes in the centre and tiny nipple-shaped callosities at the
base (Fig. 3).

This orchid is rather uncommon. It resembles the

XXXIX

Fig. 1. Nodding Lady’s-Tresses. Figs. 2 and 3. Front and side view of single flower. Fig. 4.
Characteristic lip with knobs. Fig. 5. Characteristic lip of Fragrant Lady’s-Tresses.

Fig. 2. Flower. Fig 3. Lip.

Fig. 1. Grass-leaved Lady’s-Tresses.

GYROSTACHYS 99

Nodding Lady’s-Tresses so closely that a novice is apt to
mistake one for the other. It grows in grassy places from
southern New York to Florida and Louisiana.

6. LITTLE LADY’S-TRESSES
Gyrostachys simplex (A. Gray) Kuntze. (Plate XLI., Fig. 2.)

A sMALL, fragile, inconspicuous little orchid is this
frail plant. It is as small as the other low species, being
from five to nine inches high, but it could never be mistaken
for it; its root is a single tuber and its stem is not leafy.
It has only a few scattered bracts, and the short, ovate or
oblong leaves that spring from the base are withered when
the flower blossoms, in August and September, so that the
appearance is of a slender, leafless stalk bearing a one-
inch slightly twisted spike of the most microscopic white
blossoms. Nevertheless the little tip, when magnified,
shows all the delicate crisping and veining of the large
species, and the characteristic horns at its base are quite
prominent.

Its habitat is characteristic, as it abandons the low,
damp ground, in which the other Lady’s-Tresses grow more
luxuriantly, and chooses dry and sandy places from Massa-
chusetts to Maryland, where it grows sparsely. It grows in
Rhode Island and is one of the treasures of Nantucket, that
wild sea-girt garden that retains some living memories of
the days when it was a mountain top on the coast of North
America. It is not beautiful except to those who see with

100 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

their minds the history of a forgotten past, and the mystery
of life in the presence of a significant but unnoticeable

flower. It blossoms in August and September.

7. THE SLENDER LADY’S-TRESSES
Gyrostachys gracilis (Bigelow) Kuntze. (Plate XLI., Fig. 2.)

No one could mistake the Slender Lady’s-Tresses, which
look as though the fairies had threaded spikes of white coral
in stalks of grass and twisted them for fun, as children do a
string that is to twirl a ball. Around and around in a
close-pressed single row these little white flowers, insignifi-
cant as individuals, form an odd artistic spike. From
a cluster of tuberous roots rises the bare smooth stem with
small, sharp-pointed bracts that soon fall off. A few ovate or
ovate lanceolate leaves, not more than two inches long and
often shorter, rise from small leaf stalks at the base and often
wither before the flowers come. The effect is generally
that of a green grass stalk with a twisted three-inch spike.
It averages eight inches to a foot in height, but may grow
two feet high. The minute fragrant flowers are barely a
quarter of an inch long, and all turn abruptly to the left,
following each other closely up the stalk in a spiral that
winds, sometimes once or twice, but oftener five or six times,
around the stem.

Minute as the flowers are, they show when highly mag-
nified, as in Plate XXXVI., that when the blossom first
opens, the closely pressed upper sepal and two upper petals

GYROSTACHYS IOI

limit the bees’ entrance except just over the tiny hanging
lip, and then the column is pressed so low against it that
her proboscis can only just be thrust in. So small is the lip
that no bee could use it as a threshold; it merely serves as a
little sign to its visitors of the path to the nectaries (see
‘Plate XXXVI).

A proboscis one-third of an inch long would be able to
reach the storehouse of this orchid’s sweets, but the bees
seem to do the most thriving business in honey, and never
despise these minute orchids that have no silken chambers.
Three different species have been seen visiting them, Bom-
bus Americanorum, Calliopsis andreniformis, and, in Florida,
Megachile brevis. “The last-mentioned insect,” said Rob-
ertson, who had been watching it in its visits to the Slender
Lady’s-Tresses, ‘““was found with two boat-shaped discs
with attached pollen masses fastened to the maxillary
laminz,” in such a manner that when the proboscis was
folded up, during the bee’s flight from one spike to another,
the pollen masses would not be disturbed, but the moment it
thrust its proboscis into a fully opened flower, they would
come right against the stigma.

Nothing could be more exquisitely adjusted than the
mechanism of this almost infinitesimal flower, for when after
its pollen masses have been removed (Fig. 1), the whole
column rises, as is shown in the illustration of the flower of
the Slender Lady’s-Tresses in Plate XX XVI., and presents the
sticky surface of the stigma (Fig. 2) in just the right position
to receive the vital touch of the pollen.

102 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

Perhaps it is because the mechanism is so perfect that
the flower reproduces itself so profusely, for from February,
when it blooms in Florida, to April and May in Virginia, and
July, August and September in our Northern States and
Nova Scotia, this orchid may be found anywhere in dry
fields and open woods along the coast and inland to Kansas.

XLI
Fig. 1. Slender Lady’s-Tresses. Fig. 2. Little Lady’s-Tresses.

Vill
LISTERA
TWAYBLADE. (Plate XLII.)

In the latter half of the seventeenth century lived a lover
of flowers, one Martin Lister, whose interest in science
might have brought him nothing but his own pleasure, had
not a small inconspicuous orchid been named after him.
If he ever published anything himself it has probably been
forgotten. All that is recorded of him is that he was a
correspondent of the English botanist Ray, and it was
probably through this friendship that his name was given
to the genus of orchid which is popularly known as Tway-
blade.

The genus Listera has only some ten species, which live
by preference in the arctic or temperate zones. ‘Three grow
within our limit and one other in northwestern America.

They are all small, sturdy, fresh little plants, rising
rather stoutly from fleshy fibrous roots and bearing mid-
way in their stalks a pair of very bright, crisp, oval leaves.
Between these ascends a flower stalk with a few small green-
ish purplish flowers, that scarcely attract any attention
from the passer-by, but have a definite attraction for certain

insects. So wise are the insects concerning the charms of
103

104 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

its nectar that spiders build their webs over the blossoms to
catch them; so Darwin’s son reported to his father, who
sent him forth to observe the insects that visited
them.

Though none but the orchid hunter might notice the
characteristic shape of the leaves and the bird-like fluttering
of the blossoms of these little plants that rarely grow more
than a few inches high, yet they have had considerable
attention from the scientific world.

The very learned Hooker described the structure and
action of the rostellum in Listera, but left out the part that
insects perform, and Sprengel, who fully appreciated the
fact that the construction was adapted to the visits of insects,
misunderstood the structure and action of the rostellum,
described just how they fertilised, and so failed to tell the
whole story.

This Darwin did later, when he had fully established
the fact that the insects carry the pollen from one plant to
another.

The three species of Listera which concern us have, in
addition to the pair of green leaves about the middle of the
stem, one or two small scales at the base of the stalk. The
flowers are somewhat scattered on a loose raceme that flowers
from its base up. They have no spurs, and the sepals and
petals look much alike. The anther has no lid and stands
erect, joined to the column, and has two powdery pollinia
united to a very small gland.

The fruit is in the form of an ovoid capsule, that, per-

LISTERA 105

sisting in the stalk after the blossoms have withered, ‘helps
to define the genus.

Our illustration (Plate XLII.) shows the parts that
Darwin studied before he fully learned the mechanism of
cross fertilisation of the English species of Listera ovata.
Fig. 1 is a blossom of Listera Australis.

All of the petals except the split lip have been removed
(Fig 2), leaving the ribbed ovary and the internal structure of
the column. Under the anther (a), with its pollen masses
(p), lies the stigma surface (s), with the rostellum projecting
out like a thin leaf between. The rostellum is slightly
hollow on its upper surface, and is extraordinarily irritable,
for no matter how slightly it is touched, with a needle point
or a human hair, or even influenced by the vapour of chloro-
form, a large drop of viscid fluid is instantly expelled.

The pointed tips of the pollen masses lie immediately
over the rostellum, tied together by a few weak elastic
threads that are easily broken.

Darwin observed that the agent that jogged the rostellum,
whether artificial needle tip or head of insect, never failed to
receive the drop of sticky exudation and the pollen mass at
the same time. He noticed that even when a bunch of
flowers was carried home in the hand, the sepals or petals
that accidentally brushed against the rostellum caused it to
explode its sticky drop and glue the pollen mass to the
fluttering petals, so that on reaching home it looked as
though the flowers had been shooting out their pollen to a
distance. He also noticed that after the pollen masses had

106 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

been removed the anther sprang back a little, and the
rostellum bent its tip so that it hung directly over the lip.
Once he found an injured flower in which this had not
occurred, and the tip of the anther had become glued fast to
the rostellum, so that the pollen masses were hopelessly
locked between the two.

Having observed that nectar was secreted copiously
along the ridge of the lip above its split end, Darwin went
out to see whether the insects worked in the way that his
constructive imagination had led him to believe. He
says: “In order to witness what I felt sure would take
place, I watched for an hour a group of plants on three
occasions; each time I saw numerous specimens of two
small Hymenopterous insects, namely, a Hamiteles and a
Cryptus, flying about the plants and licking up the nectar;
most of the flowers which were visited over and over again
already had their pollinia removed, but at last I saw both
these species crawl into younger flowers, and suddenly
retreat with a pair of bright yellow pollinia sticking to their
foreheads. I caught them and found the point of attachment
was to the inner edge of the eye; on the other eye of one
specimen was a ball of the hardened viscid matter, showing
that it had previously removed another pair of pollinia, and
in all probability had left them on the stigma of a
flower.”

As Darwin captured these insects he could not con-
scientiously say that he saw the act of fertilisation, but he

quotes Sprengel, who saw a Hymenopterous insect leave

suonestpiay 1aqye J9M0g
‘dry adaoxa ‘speed pur spedas [je Yea TOMOLT
HL a0 WAMOTY Tworday, “TITX

‘cSrq cursed Aq parpmag “styesasne praysV'y “1 “31

aweg “f -81q “uonest[asoy arojaq ‘pasoulal

wu aLstyT SANG‘) a

LISTERA 107

its pollen mass on the stigma. Darwin’s son also watched
a bed of Listera at some distance, and brought home
insects with the pollen mass attached to the forehead.
He also noticed that a great number of spider-webs
were spread over the plants, as if the spiders were
aware how attractive the Listera was to insects.
Darwin also tells us of an observation that shows that
the insect world has tragedies in the midst of its
daily life. In speaking of how slight a touch is sufficient
to cause the rostellum to explode, he says: “I may
mention that I found an extremely minute Hymenop-
terous insect vainly struggling to escape, with its head
cemented by the hardened viscid matter to the crest of the
rostellum and to the tips of the pollinia. The insect was
not as large as one of the pollinia, and after causing the
explosion had not strength enough to remove them; it was
thus punished for attempting a work beyond its strength,
and perished miserably.”

The three species that are familiar to us may be recog-

nised by the shape and cutting of the lip.

KEY TO THE SPECIES OF LISTERA

Lip broadly wedge-shaped, two-lobed
at the apex. 1. Broad-lipped Twayblade.

Lip very narrow and strap-like.
Lip two-cleft and twice as long
as petals. 2. Heart-leaved Twayblade.

Lip two-parted and four to eight
times as long as petals. 3. Southern Twayblade.

108 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

I. BROAD-LIPPED TWAYBLADE

Listera convallarioides (Sw.) Torrey. (Plate XLIII., Fig. 1.)

Tuis species of Twayblade looks like a greenish blossom
of Lily-of-the-Valley, hence its name convallarioides, which
means “like the convallaria.’ The two broad, smooth,
round, oval leaves are the characteristic sign, and at first
sight a novice is apt to think he has found one wild Lily-of-
the-Valley, until he notices that the leaves spring from their
base. Sometimes they are slightly cordate or kidney
shaped at their base. ‘They are three to nine nerved.

The plant grows from four to ten inches in height, of
which the flowering raceme is about one-third of its whole
length; it is downy in the half above the leaves.

From three to twelve greenish yellow flowers grow
upon little thread-like stalks with bracts. The flower is
at its largest but a quarter of an inch long, and is composed
of very narrow sepals and petals much smaller than the lip.
The characteristic shape of the lip is broad and dilated
and two lobed, with small ear-like appendages at its base.
It is not nearly as deeply cleft as in the other two species.
The column is larger than in either of the others, but still
much shorter than the lip. It has for its characteristic
sign two short wings that project above the anther.

This Twayblade is not uncommon. It grows in woods
from Nova Scotia to Alaska and California, and as far
south as Vermont; but where the high mountains stretch
along the Atlantic coast it follows them as far as North

LISTERA 109

Carolina, where it ascends as high as 4,500 feet. It blooms

from June to August.
2. HEART-LEAVED TWAYBLADE

Listera cordata (L.) R. Br. (Plate XLIII., Fig. 2.)

Tuts species is known by its very slender stem, which
grows from three to ten inches in height, and its tiny pair of
heart-shaped pointed leaves, which sit close to the stem, and
are only from half an inch to an inch in length. The
purplish flowers are so small that they can hardly be seen in
their small slender raceme at the end of the stalk. There
may be anywhere from four to twenty in the spike, but as the
minute sepals and petals are barely one-twelfth of an inch
in length, they must be examined with a good magnifying
glass. This reveals the cleft nature of the long, narrow lip,
that hangs out twice as long as the petals, and the very
small column with the clinandrium or depression in the
rostellum just showing above the anther.

The slender glabrous character of this Twayblade,
contrasted with the more sturdy appearance of its sister,
indicates that it grows in damp places. It may be found in
wet woods all over the northern part of the continent, as far
south as New Jersey and Oregon, as well as in Europe and
Asia. Though it has no beauty it has its interest in that
its complicated mechanism works as perfectly for minute
insects who visit it and carry its pollen masses from plant to
plant, with as much persistency as the more showy orchids

of the woods.

IIo OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

The mechanism, though on such a tiny scale, is as per-
fect as it is microscopic, and it has its hosts of minute
winged guests for whom it secretes nectar, and who bear
away pollen masses and clap them to the stigma of other

blossoms, just as in the larger species which Darwin studied.

3. SOUTHERN TWAYBLADE
Listera australis Lindl. (Plates XLII., XLIIL., Fig. 3.)

Tuis Twayblade has the decided characteristic of the
genus so markedly that it cannot be mistaken for either of
the other two. Its narrow lip is split nearly to the base, and
hangs out so much longer than the other minute sepals and
petals that it is almost all that is visible of the flower.

The height of the plant is the same as of the other species,
running from four to ten inches. Its smooth, shining
leaves are ovate and rather sharply pointed. There are
also a tiny pair under an inch in length, very rarely ac-
companied by a third leaf just under the flowers.

The infinitesimal flowers are olive purple and so small
that they are only one-quarter or one-eighth as long as the
half-inch divided lip, but they stand bravely out on the
somewhat downy flower stalk, waving their slit pennants in
the wind.

It is a bog plant growing in New York and New Jersey,

and found as far south as Alabama and Louisiana.

XLII

Fig. 1. Broad-lipped Twayblade. Fig. 2. Heart-leaved Twayblade. Fig. 3. Southern
Twayblade.

XLIV. Rarrresnake Prantaix. Typicar Frowrers SnHowirsc Metuop or Cross
FEertiisaT1oNn

Fig. 1. Showing the opening, the anther sacs seen. Fig. 2. Side view of flower. Fig. 3-
Section through flower, showing stigma, pollen sacs. Fig. 4. Enlarged view of stigma and
pollen sacs. Fig. 5. Pollen sacs adherent to pin and also detached, showing loose structure
and connecting threads.

IX
PERAMIUM
RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN. (Plate XLIV.)

The Rattlesnake Plantains are one of the features of
almost every patch of woods, especially pine woods, from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. One expects, as the sun glints
between branches on the soft brown carpet patterned with
green, to see their neat veiny-leaved rosettes of blue-green
velvet pressed against the background. But whoever ex-
pects to find it in bloom must search diligently. Baldwin
cites the experience of a botanist who had travelled widely
in Vermont, but who had not found a flowering specimen for
two years. Quoting his own observation, he says: “I
happened to be in a little grove of hemlocks two years ago,
in September, and noticing that these orchids were quite
‘abundant, counted them roughly. Out of 200 plants of the
Downy Rattlesnake Plantain, young and old, only twelve
had flowered, and twenty plants of the Creeping Rattle-
snake Plantain furnished but two spikes. A more careful
estimate in the following year resulted in giving 102 flower
spikes from 572 plants, young and old, of the Downy
species. One patch that lay like a mat on the ground had

226 plants in it, and but fifteen spikes.”
III

112 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

The roots of the Peramium are thick, fleshy fibres,
creeping underground, that help them to hold their own in
spite of the lesser quantity of seed. It is possible that
individual plants blossom only once in several years, or under
certain conditions, and it would be interesting for any one
who had a neighbourly patch to learn the blossoming habits
of a dozen marked plants from year to year.

The Rattlesnake Plantains are well established the world
over. There are twenty-five species growing in Europe and
Asia, and but three in America. They belong to the same
group as the Lady’s-Tresses and the Twayblades and
Helleborine. They are all members of the group to which
Darwin devoted so much attention in his work on the
“Fertilisation of Orchids by Insects.” In referring to him
we do not find the name Peramium in his index, and must
turn to the old familiar name Goodyera, by which these
orchids are even better known than by their common
American name of Rattlesnake Plantains. Goodyera was
the name given to them in honour of the botanist Goodyer
by Robert Braun in the year 1813, Kew publication; but
one year earlier, in 1812, Salisbury had published their
name in the Transactions of the Horticultural Society as
Peramium. So, obeying the accepted law of priority, we
must translate all of Darwin’s references to Goodyera into
Peramium.

The flowers grow in a bracted spike. Each flower has a
broad and round-cheeked appearance, with less effect of
the hanging inviting lip than is usual in orchids. The two

PERAMIUM ie

sepals at the side spread out widely, but the third and upper
one is united with the petals to form a hood. The lip is
rounded without being notched, and curves up into a little
sac with outspread edges that give a visiting insect a thresh-
old to stand upon.

By cutting a blossom through longitudinally, as Mr.
Gibson has done in his sketch, one can follow the steps by
which the insects forces its way in, and becomes fertilised
with pollen.

The column, that is, the combination of stigma and
anther, is peculiarly constructed.

The stigma has a sticky minutely toothed surface (Plate
XLIV., Fig. 4). The incurved lip, with its reflexed edges,
almost closes the throat of the flower (Figs. 1, 2 and 3). Above
the stigma the column projects up into a little arm that holds
the anther, and out on either side like wings. This places
the anther in such a position that there is a little cup-shaped
cavity behind it. Under the broad anther lie two pollen
masses, united at their base to a common viscid gland
(Figs. 3, 4). The back or upper surface of this anther, called
the rostellum, comes off easily like a shield, and to it adhere
the pollen masses. ‘The pollen grains cohere in little packets
(Fig. 5), as in orchis, and these packets are tied together
by strong elastic threads, which, under a powerful micro-
scope, may be made out—at first individually and then
running together into a single brown elastic ribbon, by which
the pollen masses are fastened to the shield or removable

portion of the rostellum.

114 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

Both Darwin and Asa Gray have described the visits of
the bumblebees to these plants. Inside the curved cup of
the lip (Fig. 3) lies the nectar, and in the young freshly
opened blossom the column is bent forward so that the tip
of the disc and of the anther are bowed down close above
the lip. The aperture is so narrow that when a bee’s
tongue is thrust through to seek the nectar it must invariably
pass the tip of the disc or shield. When the bee withdraws
his tongue the membrane covering the gland at the base
of the pollen masses is ruptured, and the viscid gland is
exposed. Thus by reason of its stickiness it adheres to
the bee’s tongue and the pollen masses are withdrawn
from their pockets.

It would seem that in his next visit the bee would
land these pollen masses quite ineffectually on the
back of the rostellum. But by observing various
flowers on the same spike, one will see that the older
flowers are more widely open in the throat, and that
the whole column is turned somewhat upward and
backward, and that the space is quite wide enough to
let the bee’s tongue, all pollen laden, enter the nectar cup,
and in so doing smear the under side of the stigma with its
burden.

The general construction of the column and the threads
binding the pollen masses interested Darwin greatly, for he
finds in the Goodyera (Peramium) a similarity to several
other groups of orchids which lead him to state that ‘‘Good-

yera probably shows us the state of the organs in a group

PERAMIUM 115

of orchids now mostly extinct, but the parents of many
living descendants.”
There are about twenty-five species widely distributed

in temperate and tropical regions.
KEY TO THE SPECIES OF PERAMIUM

Spike one-sided, plant small, five to
ten inches high, leaves ovate. 1. Lesser Rattlesnake Plantain.

Spike not one-sided.
Plant six to twenty inches tall,
leaves very strongly netted with
white, the tip of the lip short
and curved in. 2. Downy Rattlesnake Plantain.

Plant eight to fifteen inches high,
leaves not so strongly netted
or blotched with white; lip
swollen at the base, with a long
tip. 3. Menzies’ Rattlesnake Plantain.

I. LESSER RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN
Peramium repens (L.) Salisb. (Plate XLV.)

Tuis species is the smallest of the three Rattlesnake
Plantains familiar to us. It grows from five to ten inches
in height. The significance of its Latin name as well as
its habit would warrant us in calling it the Creeping Rattle-
snake Plantain. Its ovate leaves, though strongly marked,
blotched with white or with yellow netted veins, do not
grow in such a decided tuft as in the Downy Rattlesnake
Plantain, but have a tendency to lie along the ground before
the scape rises erect. The leaves are an inch or more in
length and half as wide, being distinctly pointed. They clasp

116 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

the stem with a short petiole, at a slight distance from one
another, instead of all rising from the base. The scape is
slight, downy, and has small scales which pass into bracts
below each flower.

The characteristic sign is that the flower spike is one-
sided. It is short and bears in a row small greenish white
flowers about a quarter of an inch long. The lip is rounded
into a little honey sac, with a narrow apex. Darwin has
observed that it, as well as Peramium pubescens, is fertilised
by bees in the manner just described.

The species grows in woods all over our continent, as
well as in Europe and Asia. It is as familiar in Nova
Scotia as in Florida and Colorado, and it has been thought
to grow as far north as Alaska. It grows at an altitude of
5,000 feet in Virginia. It blooms in July and August.

2. DOWNY RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN
Peramium pubescens (Willd.) MacM. (Plate XLVI., Fig. 1.)

THERE has always been a tendency among superstitious
folk to associate any natural object that resembled a part of
the body with a cure for disease of that organ. The leaves
of hepatica, because they were liver-shaped, were supposed
to be good for liver complaint, and this beautiful little
spring flower has been almost exterminated in this country
by a patent-medicine company that some years ago used its
leaves as one of its ingredients. The well-known lichen

Sticta pulmonarta was so called because its follicled and

XLV. Lesser RatrLresNAKE PLANTAIN

Fig. 1. Downy Rattlesnake Plantain. Fig. 2. Individual blossoms of Downy Rattlesnake
Plantain. Fig. 3. Individual blossom of Menzies’s Rattlesnake Plantain.

PERAMIUM 117

pitted surface was thought to resemble the surface of the
lungs. Consequently it was used as a cure for consumption.
It is probably by the same law of the healing power of re-
semblances that the Indians fancied that the mottled snake-
striped leaves of this orchid were good for rattlesnake bites.
Captain Carver said that they “were so convinced of its
power as an antidote that they would allow a snake to drive
its fangs into them, and chew the leaves and apply them to
the wound.” Pursh says it has a wide-spread reputation
as an infallible cure for hydrophobia, and a New England
divine tells us that the leaves of Rattlesnake Plantain were
used by the country folk to make a decoction to cure skin
diseases.

In 1672, Josselyn mentions the plant in a book called
“New England’s Rarities.” But he called it a Pyrola.
There can be no mistaking his quaint language-painting of
the leaves, “the Ground whereof is a sap Green, embroy-
dered (as it were) with many pale yellow Ribs.”

The difference between the leaves of the Downy Rattle-
snake Plantain and the Lesser is distinct enough to be seen
at a glance when the plants grow near each other in the
woods. The Downy species is more blue-green and its
leaves are more silvery, while the leaves of the Creeping
species have more yellow in the ground and veining.

The leaves are also larger than in preceding species, being
from one to two inches long, oval or ovate. They narrow
into clasping petioles and lie in a neat tufted rosette, from
the centre of which the flower scape rises.

118 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

The chief characteristic of this species is the thick down
upon the flower scape. The scape grows from six to
twenty inches in height and bears a cluster of small greenish
white pouched flowers. They are barely a quarter of an
inch long; but with a magnifying glass one can see the ovate
lateral sepals, the honey sac of the full lip whose edge is not
recurved in this species, and also the tiny column with its
sticky stigma on the under side of the shelf and the pro-
jecting anther above it.

The Downy Rattlesnake Plantain is an inhabitant of
dry woods from Newfoundland to Ontario and Minnesota.
Its habitat extends as far south as Florida and Tennessee.
It is found at an altitude of 4,000 feet in the mountains of

North Carolina. It blooms in July and August.

3- MENZIES’ RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN

Peramium Menztesi1 (Lindl.), Morong. (Plate XLVI.
Figs 3.)

Turis Rattlesnake Plantain was named after the explorer
Menzies, and is not common enough in the East to be
mistaken for the more familiar species. It grows in Canada
from Quebec to British Columbia, and was first added to the
New England flora by Miss Furbish, who found it in the
extreme north of Maine.

It is now reported from various woodland places in New
Hampshire, New York, Minnesota, Arizona and California.

There the sequoia make dark carpets for its mats of leaves,

PERAMIUM 119

as do our hemlocks and pines for the familiar tufts of the
Downy and Lesser species of the East.

The flower scape, which appears in August, looks so
much like a stalk of Lady’s-Tresses that the very eminent
Hooker described it in 1839 as Spiranthes decipiens (Spiran-
thes being the old Latin name of the Lady’s-Tresses, that
has now given way to the older Greek name Gyrostachis).

The plant is rather stouter and stiffer than either of the
other species, but has a fleshy creeping root stalk, provided
with thick fibrous roots. It has a downy stalk with bracts,
but the down is less marked than in the preceding species.
The distinguishing features lie in the leaves and lip of the
flower. The leaves are a little larger than in the other
species, sometimes being two and one-half inches long; they
are sharp pointed at both ends instead of being ovate.
They are not nearly so prominently veined as in the other
Rattlesnake Plantains. Asa Gray notes that the network
effect is sometimes entirely wanting.

The flower spike is not one-sided, as in the Creeping
Rattlesnake Plantain, and the lip of the flower is not
rounded into a sac-like pouch, as in both the other species.
It is a little swollen at the base and has a long, narrow,
recurved point, which offers a white channel to the insect’s
tongue. In the centre of the flower, which like the others is
almost a quarter of an inch long, the anther may be seen
projecting from the end of the column like a little beak.

This species blooms in August.

xX
ACHROANTHES
ADDER’S-MouTH. (Plate XLVII.)

Amonc the tiny things that grow close to Mother Earth
and bloom in July when summer is at its height, are two
very small orchids, whose characteristic sign is a single leaf
clasping the stem a little way from the ground, and a stalk
of feathery white or green flowers.

This genus was known formerly as Microstylis or Adder’s-
mouth, and as such many a schoolboy has analysed it.
Now the older name Achroanthes, which being translated

from the Greek would mean “colourless flowers,’ must

become familiar to old orchid hunters.

There are about forty species of Adder’s-mouth known to
botanists and six in North America; but of these only two
grow in our northern and eastern limits. These have a solid
bulb for a root, a slender stem a few inches high, on which is
poised the single leaf, and which is sheathed at the base by
several scales. The flowers are very small, white in one species
and green in theother. ‘They grow in a terminal raceme, and
although there is neither odour nor colour to attract visits
of insects or admiration from men, yet they are by no means

unattended by the former, and they never fail to cause
120

ACHROANTHES 121

an exclamation of delight from flower lovers, so daintily
poised and delicately crisp is the fresh, erect little plant in
either species.

The sepals of the two species are long and strap shaped,
though their length is so small as to be almost infinitesimal;
two of the petals are mere threads, and in the third, the lip
is more expanded. All are fresh and dainty and invite tiny
insects to come to their aid in transferring their pollen masses
from one flower to another.

These pollen masses are four in number, two lying in
each sac, the pairs cohering at their summit (Plate XLVIL.,
Fig. 3).

No one has really studied our American species in the
true Darwinian painstaking manner. But it would be an
interesting occupation for some modern Thoreau who loved
camping in wet woods, or near a swamp, to set up a micro-
scope in a small hut, and find out the nature of the small
flies and insects that haunt these tiny orchids.

He would doubtless find the structure somewhat the
same as in an Indian form of Adder’s-mouth which was
sent to Darwin by Dr. Hooker from Kew. In this he found
in a young bud a minute regular tongue-shaped projection on
the crest of the rostellum, formed of cells, which when slightly
disturbed resolved themselves into a drop of viscid matter.

This drop of viscid matter probably attaches the end
of the pair of pollen masses to the head of the insect that
enters the flower, but exactly how we cannot tell, until some
one has either moved a patch of Adder’s-mouth from its

122 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

swamp to his study table or moved himself and his micro-
scope to their neighbourhood.

That the flowers are perfectly adapted to their insect
visitors is evident from the fact that as soon as a flower
withers on the stalk its ripened ovary begins to swell into an

ovoid, almost round, beakless capsule.

KEY TO THE SPECIES OF ACHROANTHES

Leaf sheathing the base of the stem,
flowers whitish. 1. White Adder’s-mouth.

Leaf clasping the stem near the mid-
dle, flowers greenish. 2. Green Adder’s-mouth.

I. WHITE ADDER’S-MOUTH
Achroanthes monophylla (L.) Greene. (Plate XLVIL., Fig. 1.)

Our two species of Adder’s-mouth bear scientific names,
having exactly the same meaning. Monophylla is the
Greek version, and Uniflora the Latin, for “one leaf.”
Therefore, no distinction is carried either in the specific
name, which is meant to be descriptive, or in the leaf itself,
except that in the White Adder’s-mouth species the leaf
clasps the stem near the root, and in the Green Adder’s-
mouth it stands jauntily off at an oblique angle, almost
half way up the stalk. The White Adder’s-mouth is a
very tiny plant, often not more than four inches high, never
more than six. The leaf is oval, and from one to two inches
long. The raceme, which may be from one to three inches in
length, is not a half-inch thick. This indicates how minute

must be the flowers that stand erect on either side, on tiny

XLVIT

Fig. 1. White Adder’s-mouth. Fig. 2. Green Adder’s-mouth. Fig. 3. Characteristic pair
of pollen masses.

ACHROANTHES 123

pedicels. In fact they are so very small that they are often
not more than a twelfth of an inch in length.

The only petal really distinguishable to the naked eye is
the lip that is pointed heart shaped, with saw-toothed sides.

In spite of their minuteness they form a most airy,
graceful, feathery white spike, which, rising above the crisp
veined leaf, makes a very exquisite and fairy-like plant.

This White Adder’s-mouth grows in very damp woods
from Quebec to Minnesota, and from Pennsylvania to

Nebraska, and blooms in July.

2. GREEN ADDER’S-MOUTH

Achroanthes unifolia (Michx.) Raf. (Plate XLVIL., Fig. 2.)

Tue Green Adder’s-mouth has a glabrous striped stem,
which grows from four to ten inches in height and which
bears its one shining green oval leaf about half way up the
stem.

The character of the raceme is quite distinct from that
of the White Adder’s-mouth. It is often an inch thick, and
about three inches long, and composed of slender greenish
flowers standing off obliquely on slender spreading pedicels.

The sepals are narrow and oblong, and the two lateral
petals as narrow as threads. The lip is broad and three
parted, without any decided marking, but sufficiently
distinct from the sharp-pointed tip of the heart-shaped lip
of the White Adder’s-mouth to distinguish the one species
from the other.

bp see OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

This species has a very wide range, extending from New-
foundland to Ontario and Minnesota, south to Florida,
Alabama and Missouri. It is found at an altitude of 4,000
feet in the mountains of North Carolina. It blooms through
July.

A curious little note by Baldwin in his ‘Orchids of New
England”’ offers a suggestion for observation. He says that
it was observed by a naturalist of Ottawa, Canada, that in
1882 the Green Adder’s-mouth was very common in that
region, while few specimens of the White Adder’s-mouth
could be found. In 1883 the reverse was the case. The
White was abundant, and only one or two plants of the other
species noted. He adds that “This habit of appearing and
disappearing without apparent reason is another charm of

the Orchis family.”

XI
LEPTORCHIS
TWAYBLADE

Tuer: is still another genus to which the popular name
‘Twayblade, or Two-leaf, is given. It is the genus familiarly
known to orchid hunters in the days before the new nomen-
clature, as Liparis. The older Greek name Leptorchis
means a slender orchis.

The characteristic sign of our species is a pair of oval
shining leaves, which rise from the root, clasping the stem.
They are larger than the leaves of the other Twayblades
in the genus Listera and could not be mistaken for them, as
in that genus they are born half way up the stem, and at
right angles to it, while in this they form large loose sheaths
at the stem’s base.

The root is a round, solid bulb, with a few fibres attached.
It sends off a large offshoot which is the bud of a new
plant.

The effect of the plant is of a crisp, stiff, rather coarse
little herb, with yellowish green flowers, whose real beauty
does not strike the observer until he has examined it with the
magnifying glass. Then he will find a slender flower whose

sepals and petals are nearly all reduced to narrow straps or
125

126 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

threads. They are all of about equal length, but stand off
from each other with such strong curves that the flowers,
according to one author, “have a combative air like so many
little dragons.” Darwin does not describe the structure of
the Liparis nor speak of the insects that fertilise it, but he
describes a few of the great exotic tribe Malaxez, “which
ornament in so wonderful a manner the tropical forests.”
Allied to them are the Adder’s-mouths and Twayblades,
which are among the most insignificant of the orchids in our
woods.

A characteristic of this tribe is that the pollen grains
cohere in large waxy masses, and are not often furnished
with caudicles or bound with threads.

In this particular genus there are four pollen masses,
two in each cell tucked into the anther that is attached to the
end of the elongated incurved column.

Although no one has written for public print just how
fertilisation has taken place, yet Mr. Gibson’s sketch of the
parts of the flower (Plate XLVIII., Fig. 3) is so clear that if,
with the structure clearly in mind, one could go to some
damp dell and watch a few of these plants for an hour or two,
one might see exactly how fertilisation is effected. As the
flower stands poised on its stalk, one of the several in the
raceme, the greenish yellow petals and sepals radiate star
fashion with curved tips around the column. The lateral
petals are narrow as threads, and the broader lip is raised
alluringly. It has a nectar-secreting groove or furrow down

its median line, and the edges are incurved to make a

XLVIII. Larce Twaysrape

Fig. 1. Natural size. Fig. 2. Flower raceme, enlarged. Fig. 3. Single blossom, very
much enlarged.

Ny,

XLIX. Lorser’s TwayBrapE
Fig. 1. Natural size. Figs. « and 3. Single flower, magnified.

LEPTORCHIS Loy

channel which guides the insect to the curved and capped
column. That little projective cap on the anther would, we
think, be easily knocked off by a fly backing away and
flying upward from his feast, and if it exudes when touched
a viscid drop, as do other of the twayblade, the pollen masses
would be drawn out and would stick fast to the insect’s head.

This is a genus worth knowing and watching, for it gives
an opportunity for original observation.

There are about one hundred species of Leptorchis
growing in temperate and tropical regions, but only two are
found in the Northern and Eastern States.

KEY TO THE SPECIES OF LEPTORCHIS

Raceme many flowered, lip as long as
the petals. 1. Large Twayblade.

Raceme few flowered, lip shorter than
the petals. 2. Loesel’s Twayblade.

I. LARGE TWAYBLADE
Leptorchis lilitfolia (L.) Kuntze. (Plate XLVIII.)

Tue Lily-leafed Twayblade is the translated common
name that is more often given to this species than the name
Large Twayblade. It is only large when near its smaller
relative. Its stem varies from four to ten inches in height.
The two oval ribbed leaves rise from the bulb, sheathing the
stem loosely.

The raceme is sometimes six inches long and with a great

many flowers for so small a plant. They stand well off

128 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

from the stalk on pedicels fully half an inch long, so that
each flower with its curved thread-like side petals, and
broad, striped incurved lip, stands out distinctly and inde-
pendently, working a very striking effect for so small and
pale a plant.

The fruit is a ribbed club-shaped capsule on a thickened
pedicel. As these capsules stand erect upon the stalk they
present a totally different appearance from the other Tway-
blades of the genus Listera, where the ovoid capsules are
pendent on the stalk.

The Large, or Lily-leafed Twayblade blooms from
May to July, according to the locality. It ranges from
Georgia and Missouri to Maine and Minnesota, and ascends

to 3,000 feet in Virginia.

2. FEN ORCHIS, OR LOESEL’S TWAYBLADE
Leptorchis Loeselit (L.) MacM. (Plate XLIX.)

Tuts Twayblade has a strongly ribbed scape rising
from two to eight inches in height and clasped by a pair of
pointed elliptical leaves which are sometimes six inches long.
The raceme bears only a few greenish flowers which are
smaller than in the other species. The sepals are narrowly
lanceolate and spreading. ‘The petals are linear and curved
backward, while the wavy, minutely scalloped lip is curved
down and under, forming a threshold for the insect to cling
to and clamber up.

The sharp angles of the ovary, with its jagged ribs and

LEPTORCHIS 129

the dotted and mottled marking of the lip is a distinctive
feature of this species.

It has a more northern habitat than the preceding Tway-
blade. It loves wet woodlands or banks where springs
abound and thus deserves its name Fen Twayblade. It
grows in Nova Scotia and across the continent to the North-
west Territory. Its furthest southern limit is Maryland and
Missouri. It blooms from May to July.

XII
CALYPSO
Calypso bulbosa (L.) Oakes. (Plate L.)

In the East Indies there is a group of orchids, warmth
loving and beautiful, of which one species has wandered
over straits that were once connecting lands to the far
hills of our north country and has made its home under the
pines and damp crags, and in the cold wet woods of the
mountains.

It is Calypso bulbosa. Its specific name used to be Ca-
lypso borealis, which meant “Nymph of the North,” for the
flower was dedicated to the goddess Calypso. It is a
poetic grief to those who loved this exquisite little brilliant
blossom, that its bulbous root must be the excuse for its
revised cognomen, instead of that far North where it has
journeyed to bring the luxuriant touch of the South to the
summer.

When Linnzus found the blossom in the cold woods of his
beloved Sweden he gave it the name Cypripedium boreale
because its shoe-like pouch looked much like that of the
Lady’s-Slipper. But he did not appreciate the finer points
of mechanism by which the orchids are now classified ac-

cording to the structure of their stigma and stamens. Modern
130

L. Catypso

LI. Corarioruiza

»ssom cut length showing curved column and anther.

llen masses adhering to the stigma. Fig. 4. Pollen masses lying

CALYPSO 131

classification puts the Calypso in the same general group as
the Adder’s-mouth and Twayblades.

Although it is common in Oregon and the Northwest it is
very rare in New England. As it blooms in May or early
June and haunts the cold mountain dampness, it is not apt
to be found by the “summer people,”’ who would certainly
exterminate it with a rash passion for its loveliness.

The unpoetic manuals describe it as a bog herb, with a
solid bulb and coralloid roots, and a showy terminal bracted
flower.

But the sunset would need to stock a painter’s palette
if he would represent the little blossom as it hangs from its
jointed stalk, some six inches above the ground. The
flowers are purple varied with pink and shading to yellow.
Deep purple lines accentuate the colour in the crimson
petals, and a brush of yellow woolly hairs bristle up under
the column, on the two-pointed yellowish tip of the shoe-like
pouch.

Travellers to Labrador and Alaska bring this lovely little
orchid home with them, and hunters in Maine see it. It is
also found growing in the black soil of the arbor-vite swamps
in Vermont.

All its nearest of kin, belonging to the genus Czlogyne,
live in the East Indies; but this one lone northern nymph
has strayed through northern Europe and found homes in
Lapland and Russia, as well as in our northern countries.
It has been found in Canada “on a high limestone ridge,

sparsely covered with white pines in holes, caused

132 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

by tearing up of the roots and superincumbent earth when
fresh trees are uprooted by storms.”

The place to look for it is in the primeval forest in Maine,
where the groves of fallen trees are wreathed with Twin-
flowers and Snowberry vines, where in the cold silence of
early summer it springs with its pointed heart-shaped leaf

from its little ivory bulb into radiant blossom in the evergreen

shade.

XIII
CORALLORHIZA
coRALROOT. (Plate LI.)

Does every family have its degenerate members? In
the social world degeneration seems to mean the ability to
do without something that has grown to be a necessity to
everybody else. To do without clothes, or cooked food, or
manners, would imply some kind of degeneration, although
the individual that had reverted to such aboriginal habits
might be a very well-developed specimen of humanity.
Possibly the orchids, if they could grasp their relation to each
other, would class the Coralroots as the degenerates of
their family, for the reason that they do without leaves.
Certainly leaves seem to be essential to every well-regulated
plant, as clothes to a human being; but in the woods that are
glorified by the Cypripedium and Habenaria we come
upon a leafless, greenless, uncanny plant that lives the life
of a beggar, and yet is proud withal, for it has its spotted
banner and its insect servitors, and it keeps up the family
traditions in every way except that it has no chlorophyl.

Possibly chlorophyl, the green-making granules that
crowd the cells of the leaf and stem, bears the same relation
to the flower world as does the gold that circulates in the

133

134 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

human world. Certainly it is the transmuting element. It
is through the chlorophyl grains that the crude elements of
the soil and air are transformed into flowers and seed, as in
the world of men it is the power of gold that transforms
the crude elements of the earth into palaces and luxuries.
Possibly the plant that is poor in chlorophyl has sunk lower
and lower through generations till it is reduced to the condi-
tion of living on others; and could not adapt itself to the
forming of its own chlorophyl any more than a beggar could
to the earning of money. Some such plants live on the sap of
others, as do the dodder and mistletoe, fastening suckers into
their living cells and drawing out the fresh juices that are
destined for the plant’s own use, until they kill it, when they
die with their host; but others called saprophytes live more
as beggars do, on the refuse of other plants; on dead or dying
wood underground.

The Coralroots are saprophytes or root parasites.
Sometimes in burrowing among the mosses and liverworts of
an Adirondack swamp, one will uproot a bunch of pinkish-
brown coral, and then looking for the plant will find a thin
brownish-purple stem with apparently a few withered seed
vessels on it. This is all there is of the Coralroot’s stalk
and flower.

It was from the coral-like, bunchy, knobby, twisted root-
stocks that suck a scanty existence from other roots and
buried things that Linnzus gave this group of orchids the
name Corallorhiza (Plate LI., Fig. 1). The root is always
hard to dig up, it is buried so low between roots and under

CORALLORHIZA 135

stones; but when found and washed it is a most interesting
object, especially when one realises that in its knobby
warts there is some chemical power different from that of all
other plants, except such as the Indian Pipe and Broom-
rape, chemical differences that send wise men to their
Jaboratories to experiment, and philosophers to their studies
to wonder why in all this world whose natural laws are so
wonderful, a little group of plants should live so unnaturally
and yet have adapted themselves so comfortably to their
limitations.

But on the other hand, if the orchids were able to discuss
values, they might possibly place the Corallorhiza higher in
the social scale, as the Hindoos would reverence a priest with
his begging bowl, where we would see only the exponent of a
parasitic system. For the orchids that grace the green-
houses, those snared like flaming birds from the tops of
tropical trees, have all some mysterious power of drawing
their nourishment from the air and moisture through the
apparent medium of a little bark, or moss; so it may be the
creed of these spirit flowers that they should be served
rather than serve themselves, and that to delve in mud for
their food is unworthy of their kind, and our thrifty Habe-
narias and Cypripediums that thrust ordinary roots in moist
black soil may be thought as much unclassed as a Buddhist
who should drive a trade for money.

Therefore it may be that the Corallorhizas who do not
work for their own living are after all more closely con-

nected with the gorgeous orchids that do not come into con-

136 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

tact with the elements of the soil; and the leafy rooted
orchids may be the degenerate children of Namon, thrust out
from the aristocracy.

Be it as it may, the Coralroots afford a chance for
study in the new field of chemical reaction, and will some
day forge a link in the vast chain of knowledge of the
relationship between the organic and inorganic world.

‘There is, however, something a little uncanny about the
Coralroot flowers. Walking through a thick, rich wood
over beds of brown leaves, one is suddenly aware of slender
purple streaks piercing the dead leaves. On stooping to
examine them one sees that they shade through brown and
purple to a light, clear green and that they are furnished with
a raceme with tiny flowers standing off stiffly and sparsely at
an oblique angle or hung with little drooping green cucum-
bers for seed capsules. One sees another, and another, till
suddenly, as if one were made aware of the presence of
spirits, one sees that the hillside is so thick with them that if
their flowers were, for instance, like those of the Purple-
fringed Orchid, the woods would be one sheet of violet flame.

Close to the stem is pressed a purple scale or two, the
rudiments of the leaves that bear no green and lend no
service to the plant nourishment.

All five familiar Eastern plants look much alike, save
for some detail of size or form of lip. It requires a stretch
of the imagination to consider the small brownish-purple
wisps of flowers upon their bare stalk, beautiful. The

pendent greenish capsules, lixe fairy cucumbers, that ripen

CORALLORHIZA 137

from the twisted ovaries after the blossoms are gone, are
more attractive. But with a good magnifying glass the
flowers of the Coralroot show spots and ridges, a notched
lip and a curved column, where stigma and stamens are
combined in a mechanism as interesting as in any of the
orchids, to protect first and then to distribute the pollen.
In all our species the sepals and petals are about the
same length; but in none except Corallorhiza multiflora is
there any spur manifest. In the others there is a short sac
that adheres to the ovary like a little ridge at the point where
the spur usually swings free. Inside of the minute flower a
magnifying glass shows a column that lies nearly free from
the flower, and that is slightly incurved (Plate LI., Fig. 2).
The anther lies at the end of the column and has a lid which
claps close over the pollen grains, as the insect thrusts its
tongue down the very small narrow throat of a blossom, but
the slightest touch as of the drawing back of the insect’s
tongue snaps it back and often knocks it off, and out fall four
soft, waxy pollen masses, in two pairs (Plate LI., Fig. 4).
On the under surface of the column the stigma lies in a
slightly hollowed place (Plate LI., Fig. 3), and there the
pollen is deposited as the insect flies to the first more mature
and more widely opened flower. The transferring of the
pollen is due to its own powdery, waxy quality. There are
no stalks with adhesive discs as in the Habenaria, and no
connecting tissue. But the work of fertilisation seems to be
thoroughly carried on. Mr. Gibson examined four plants
in blossom and found that the lid that protects the pollen

138 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

masses had been carried off in every open flower, and was
present only in one bud left unopened, while on the under
curve of the uncapped column, where the stigma lies, there
was dry pollen adhering and turning blackish. While
as a further proof that the work of cross fertilisation is
thoroughly carried on, one finds the little twisted green
capsules drooping in regular order adown the stalk, after
the flowers have blossomed.

There are about fifteen species of Corallorhiza distrib-
uted all through the north temperate zone. In addition to
the following some four others occur in the southern and
western parts of North America. The cutting of the lip
of these small flowers, and the presence or absence of a
little sac-like protuberance in place of a spur, are the char-

acteristic signs of the different species.

KEY TO THE SPECIES OF CORALLORHIZA

A small, sac-like spur growing to the
top of the ovary.
Lip two-toothed or two-lobed
near the base, flowers hanging
down on raceme. 1. Early Coralroot.

Lip entire, not notched at end,
flowers very small. 2. Small-flowered Coralroot.

Lip entire, notched at end,
flowers more than half-inch
long, erect. 3. Wister’s Coralroot.

Lip deeply three-lobed, flowers
three-quarters of an inch long,
erect. 4. Large Coralroot.

No spur, ovary smooth, flowers
striped with purple. 5. Striped Coralroot.

z. Large Coralroot.

1. Early Coralroot. Fig.

Fig.

LI
Fig. 1. Wister’s Coralroot. Fig. 2. Small-flowered Coralroot.

CORALLORHIZA 139

I. THE EARLY CORALROOT
Corallorhiza Corallorbiza (L.) Karst. (Plate LII., Fig. 1.)

Tue Early Coralroot has a smooth, naked stem grow-
ing from four to twelve inches in height. Several close
sheathing bracts clasp the stem at the base, and at its
summit the half-inch dull, dingy purple blossoms hang in a
raceme from one to three inches in length. The pedicels on
which the flowers hang are so short as to make them appear
sessile, and the bracts below them are so small as to be
almost invisible. The early time of blooming, May and
June, the shortness of the pedicels, and the drooping habit
of the flowers on the raceme are the characteristic sign
by which this Coralroot may be known from the others
that so closely resemble it. It grows in swampy places
and is often found as a near neighbour of Calypso, but it is
rather rare, though it has a wide range, being found as far
north as Nova Scotia and Alaska, and as far south as the
mountains in Georgia. It can stand the coolness of 3,000
feet altitude in Vermont, and it grows in Europe. It would
appear from such a widely scattered habitat that it must
once have been a common plant, and that the condi-
tions that serve it now hardly well enough to keep it in
existence among its leafy neighbours, were once sufhcient
to its needs.

The sepals and petals are about quarter of an inch
long. The lip is shorter than the petals, and is whitish.
It has two minute notches at the end (Plate LIV., Fig. 1).

140 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

There is no true spur, but a sac or protuberance joined to the

tip of the ovary.

2. SMALL-FLOWERED CORALROOT
Corallorhiza odontorhiza (Willd.) Nutt. (Plate LIII., Fig. 2-)

Tue slender purplish scape of this, perhaps the most
insignificant of all our orchids, is from six to fifteen inches
high and has from six to twenty minute flowers. They are
seldom more than a quarter of an inch in length, but under
the magnifying glass they show as bravely as do some of the
Habenarias. The lip, which is not more than two lines
long, is slightly notched or toothed upon its broadly ovate
edge. It is whitish and is marked with purple lines con-
verging toward the throat and ornamented with a few spots.

The smallness of the flowers and their distinct pedicels,
as well as the bracts that are visible beneath them, dis-
tinguish this Coralroot from the Early Coralroot, and the
drooping habit of the flowers in the raceme distinguish it
from all others whose flowers stand erect.

It grows in woods from Massachusetts to Michigan,
and is found in Florida. It reaches the 3,000-foot level in
North Carolina. It blooms in July and September.

3. WISTER’S CORALROOT

Corallorbiza Wisteriana Conrad. (Plate LIII., Fig. 1.)

Tuts Coralroot, described by Conrad in the fournal
of the Academy in Philadelphia, in the year 1829, must be

distinctly American.

CORALLORHIZA 141

It is stouter and taller than the Small Coralroot,
growing as high as sixteen inches, though usually shorter.
It has a loose raceme from two to five inches long, bearing
tubular flowers nearly three-quarters of an inch long.
They stand erect on slender pedicels, but when the capsules
are ripe they droop. The lip is the characteristic sign; it
widens from a narrow claw at the throat to a broad oval
(Plate LIV., Fig. 2). It has a slightly wavy margin and a
notch at the apex. Two short, sharp, high ridges converge
toward the throat. The drooping capsule is nearly half an
inch long when ripe.

In Florida and Texas this Coralroot begins to bloom
in the woods in February and follows the spring north to
Massachusetts and Ohio, where it blooms in May.

4. LARGE CORALROOT

Corallorhiza multiflora Nutt. (Plate LII., Fig. 2,
LIV, Bigs 3)

Tue characteristic of this species is that it possesses a
little more of everything than its kindred—more flowers, as
its name indicates; more inches of height, eight to twenty; a
longer raceme, two to eight inches, and more elaborately
marked flowers. It is really beautiful in its variations of
colours. It shades from brown to purple, from purple to
pink, and has a touch of white on the spotted purple-lined
lip, and of yellow on the spur. The absence of all green and
the soft blending of other colours make it noticeable, and it is

142 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

not as apt to be overlooked or mistaken for a naked stalk
of seed pods as some of the smaller Coralroots.

The flowers grow stiffly erect on the scape, but droop on
lengthened pedicels in fruit.

The petals of this species are narrow and about a quarter
of an inch long and somewhat spotted. The lip with its
alluring spots has a peculiar shape. It is oval in general
outline, but is three lobed. At the upper part there is a
deep constriction that gives the effect of a pair of rings.
Often there is another hour-glass constriction on the lower
portion. At the throat above the spots are two distant
ridges which undoubtedly guide the insect’s tongue to its
destruction.

The knob on the ovary that serves for a spur is quite
distinct in this species and makes one wonder whether in the
course of gradual development the Coralroots began to
evolve a spur, and finally some more perfectly adapted
species was developed that carried it to perfection, as in the
Habenarias, or whether the knob or wart pressed close to
the ovary is a survival of a once more perfectly developed
spur with a honey sac. The lack of leaves and the general
degenerate character of the Coralroots seem to indicate
that the spur is a survival rather than a forerunner of
spurred flowers.

The Large Coralroot is found in the woods of the
Northern States. It extends as far north as Nova Scotia and
British Columbia. It grows in Florida, Missouri, Wash-
ington State and California; and the explorers of the goth

CORALLORHIZA 143

parallel reported it in one locality at an altitude of 7,000 feet.
Its wide-spread habitat shows that it has held its own in spite
of its leafless condition. Doubtless its every attraction of
spur and spots and stripes serves to make it the most con-
spicuous and the best adapted of its kind, hence from July
until September it may be found rather commonly in woods

from one coast of the continent to the other.

5. STRIPED CORALROOT
Corallorhiza striata Lindl. (Plate LIV., Fig. 4.)

Tuts Coralroot is also large, growing from eight to
twenty inches in height. Its scape is stout and purplish, and
it bears from ten to twenty-five flowers on a raceme that
grows from two to six inches long.

It is one of the three Coralroots whose flowers grow
erect. It may be known by the colour of its flowers, which
are of a dingy purple hue streaked with lines of true purple.
The individual blossoms are often three-quarters of an inch
long, and the spreading lip, that hangs out a little longer
than the rest of the blossom, gives it a certain braveness in
spite of its sombreness. A distinct bract clasps each sessile
ovary, and stands sharply erect, after the fruit ripens, and
the elliptical capsule, nearly an inch long, droops on the
stalk.

On pulling off the lip of one of these Coralroots and
examining it under the microscope, one will see a divided
ridge in the throat (Plate LIV., Fig. 4), lying between the

144 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

incurved edges of the constricted parts. This must force
the insect to a sideways entrance to the flower. There is no
spur in this species, and it has not been recorded where the
nectar is found, but possibly it lies in a sort of sac-like
enlargement of the flower just above the ovary. The
Striped Coralroot grows in woods from northern New
York to Michigan and is found as far west as Oregon and

California. It blooms in July.

N
“anv
\ yy

Fig. 1. Characteristic shape of lip of Early Coralroot. Fig. 2. Blossoms, showing lip
of Wister’s Coralroot. Fig. 3. Front and side view of blossom of large Coralroot. Fig. 4.
Lip and capsule of Striped Coralroot (all enlarged).

TipuLaria orn CRANE-FLY

Orcuis

XIV
TIPULARIA
CRANE-FLY ORCHIS
Tipularia unifolia (Muhl.) B.S.P. (Plate LV.)

One of the rarest orchids that we have in the Eastern
United States, and that ranks next to the smaller Pogonia
in its scarcity, is the Crane-fly Orchis. Here and there in
sandy woods in New England, as far as Michigan and south
to Louisiana and Florida, it may occasionally be found.
It is a prize to the collector, and its discovery will arouse a
train of thought if he be a philosopher, for the specimen
that he brings home to his herbarium must be a hardy
survivor of a genus that once was scattered widely over the
earth. In the Himalayan Mountains there is a species of
the Crane-fly Orchis so like this, that its only distinguishing
feature is a slight difference in the tip of the leaf. Did this
orchis have its day when the continents were so different
in outline that they made a continuous garden; and since
oceans have rolled between, is it any wonder that the Asiatic
brother should be not quite recognisable to its American
relations that have almost died out ?

Whether the Himalayan Crane-fly Orchis is common and
hardy there we cannot say, but for some reason, in this
country, this plant, that must once have been common to

145

146 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

be so widely spread, is not able to cope with competition in
the shape of more alluring flowers that attract insects, or
else it does not find congenial soil.

The Crane-fly is one of the three American species of
orchids that send up a single leaf in the autumn. The
other two are Calypso and the Puttyroot. The Crane-fly
puts forth a smooth, ovate-pointed, young, reddish-purple
leaf about the middle of September. As it attains its full size
it turns dark green and frequently lasts through the winter.

The following July the flower scape appears. It springs
from the solid bulb or corn that forms the root, and of which
several sometimes grow in a cluster. It rises to a height of
fifteen or twenty inches, and is flowered along the upper leaf
with small half-inch, greenish-purple blossoms borne on
long flower stalks. ‘These give the effect of a very loose
raceme. There are no bracts at the base of each flower, but
the inch-long slender spur, that hangs from the lips, swings
between the flowers and takes away that naked look that
comes with a flower stalk that has no bracts. The sepals
and petals are purplish or brownish, and only a quarter of an
inch long, except the narrow lip, which is elongated and
three-lobed. The very slender straight or sometimes curved
spur is the characteristic sign of this genus, as well as
the bright green column that sticks out of the centre of
the flower. The anther has a lid under which are two pollen
masses, each of which is two-parted, and connected by a
linear stalk. The rarity of this flower has given no one an

opportunity to see how it is fertilised.

LVI. LimoporuMm or CALoPoGoNn
Fig. 1. Blossoming plant. Fig. 2. Single blossoms.

LVII. Hexarectris or CresTED CORALROOT

XV
LIMODORUM
GRASS-PINK
Limodorum tuberosum L. (Plate LVI.)

Tue Greek name, which means meadow gift, is appro-
priate for this brilliant blossom which rises among the tall
grasses of wet meadows and bogs over the whole eastern
part of the continent. Caiopogon is the name by which
it is known to earlier botanists.

It frequents the same haunts as the Rose Pogonia, and in
June or July there are few extensive bogs where both do not
grow. As Baldwin says, “The more dangerous the morass
and the more untrustworthy the scow you have discovered
on the shore of a lake or creek, the more confident you may
be that your prize is awaiting you.”

This is the only species of Limodorum that comes within
our eastern limit.

There is one striking feature that distinguishes this
orchis from others. The ovary is not twisted as in all our
other orchids, consequently the lip is in its proper place and
stands erect over the flower instead of hanging from the
under side.

The slender grass-like plant rises a foot or a foot and a

147

148 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

half in height from a small white bulb that shines like a tiny
egg between its brown sheath. Some long, fleshy rootlets
hold it in place, and from under a long brown sheath that
sometimes extends for several inches, there springs a bright
green leaf, generally long and narrow, with parallel veins.
It has a smooth surface and margin, and looks very like a
blade of grass.

Below the flower cluster is a smaller pointed bract leaf,
and then comes the little spire of blossoms of three to fifteen
flowers. The stem ascends in angled joints, each about an
inch in length, and from each bend springs one or two
blossoms, each an inch long. The blossoms ascend, the
lowest withering while the youngest are still in their curved
oval buds.

A little green sheath supports each flower. The ovary is
slender and ribbed, often slightly curved, but never twisted
around. The six oval, pointed, lavender or crimson-purple
petals and sepals flutter and curve away from the centre.
The lip, reared high, and spotted with white, is scalloped
like a standing heart. It bears a brush of orange, rose or
yellow bristles that bend toward the column. The in-
curved column is lavender, and attached under a shelf on its
back by a slender thread are two parallel anther sacs. How
the insects effect cross fertilisation is yet to be discovered;
but to do this a trustworthy punt and a mosquito net, and
hours of patience are requisite, for if one removed the Grass-

pink from its swampy home, one could never induce the

LIMODORUM 149

myriad insects that live in a swamp to accompany it to one’s
study or garden.

But that the right insects continually serve to transfer
its pollen is evident from the fact that on slitting open its
oblong, erect capsule one finds it filled with ripened seeds.

XVI
HEXALECTRIS
CRESTED CORALROOT

Hexalectris aphyllus (Nutt.) Raf. (Plate LVIT.)

Tue rich Southern woods of North Carolina, Kentucky,
Florida, Missouri and northern Mexico have an August-
blooming orchis whose root is very like the Coralroots of
the genus Corallorhiza. The stout scape of eight to twenty
inches height has scales instead of leaves; the upper are
sharp pointed and the lower sheathing and blunt.

The raceme bears eight to twelve large flowers, each about
an inch long. Their narrow elliptical sepals and petals are
brownish purple, striped with deeper purple veins. The spur-
less lip, broad and three-lobed, has a rounded wavy margin.
The few tiny capsules are elliptical and nearly an inch long.

This Coralroot differs structurally from the genus
Corallorhiza in many ways, one being that there is not even
the rudiment of the spur that in Corallorhiza forms a. knob
on the ovary. Its leafless and chlorophylless character is
physiologically the same as in Corallorhiza, but as the plant
is more distinctly Southern it has not received the attention
of Eastern botanists, and nothing is known of the structure

of its column and of its insect visitors.
150

LVIII. Aprectrum. Apam-Anp-Eve or PutryrooT

XVII
APLECTRUM
ADAM-AND-EVE. PUTTYROOT

A plectrum spicatum (Walt.) B.S. P. (Plate LVIII.)

THE Aplectrum or “Spurless” Orchis, as its Greek name
signifies, is one of those plants that has become familiar to the
natives of a place because of some useful property. It rises
from a solid bulb-like root, like the corm of a crocus. This
bulb sends out offsets, each of which takes two years to de-
velop, and dies at the end of the third, so that on digging up
a root after the plant has finished flowering in June, there
will be found two more bulbs in a straight line connected
with the dying one. These two joined bulbs are called
“Adam-and-Eve” by the negroes and poor whites in
Georgia and the Southern States, where the orchid grows
freely. They wear them as amulets, and tell each other’s
fortunes by placing the separated bulbs in water, and
according as “Adam or Eve pops up calculate the chances
of retaining a friend’s affection, getting work, or living in
peace with neighbours.”

Pursh says that the name Puttyroot is more widely
used in the North, for in olden days it was the custom of

thrifty housewives to grind the roots and mix the powder

151

152 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS

with water, making a sticky paste with which they were
able to mend their broken crockery.

Like Calypso bulbosa, this plant begins its cycle of life
late in summer or early in September, by sending up from
a two-year-old corm a single leaf. “A stiff, dark purple
horn first pricks the ground, rises slowly, for it has a long and
severe life before it, and when it grudgingly uncurls, shows
a coarse leaf, greenish on the upper side, and threaded with
numerous white veins. Crushed down and bleached by the
snows, it presents itself in the spring in a very wrinkled
condition, holding on bravely till the plant flowers, when it
withers away.”

The leaf is from four to six inches long and from a half-
inch to three inches in width, being sometimes elliptical and
sometimes ovate in shape.

The smooth flower stalk grows from one to two feet high,
bearing two or three scales. A small raceme with several
inch-long flowers hanging loosely on short pedicels. It
looks rather like a Coralroot, for the narrow flowers are a
dull yellowish brown mixed with purple, and are formed
of narrow sepals and petals about half an inch long. The
lip is shorter than the petals and slightly three-lobed with a
wavy margin. It is white, flecked with purple, and free
from the slightly curved short column.

The ovoid angled capsules grow to nearly an inch in
length and hang upon the flower stalk.

The plant is not uncommon, growing from Ontario to
the Northwest Territory and Oregon, south to Georgia,

APLECTRUM 153

Missouri and California. It is, however, rare in New
England. A Michigan botanist wrote some years ago that
it was very abundant near Detroit, but that he had watched
some years and had seen no flowers, only buds that had
never matured.

Though the flowers have a sweet fragrance, the bulbs have
a decidedly unpleasant odour as well as taste.

INDEX

Aceras Anthropophora, 9.
Achroanthes, 120.

Key to species, 122.

monophylla, 122.

unifolia, 123.
Adam-and-Eve, 151.
Adder’s-mouth, 120.
Aerial roots, xiv.
Aplectrum spicatum, I51.
Arethusa, 66.

bulbosa, 78.

of Australia, 66.

Baldwin on “The Orchids of New
England,” vi.

Bog Orchis, Small Northern, 33.

Botanical Club of Am. Assoc. for
Advancement of Science, ix.

Botanical Congress, viii.

British bee and foreign orchid, 67.

Britton and Brown’s “Illustrated
Flora,” ix.

Broad-lipped Twayblade, 108.

Burroughs, John, 16.

Calypso bulbosa, 130.
Caterpillar protected by blossom,
54-

Chlorophy], xiii, 134.

Coralroot, 133.

Corallorhiza, 133.
Corallorhiza, 139.
Key to species, 138.
multiflora, 137, 141.

13D

Corallorhiza
odontorhiza, 140.
striata, 143.
Wisteriana, 140.

Crane-fly Orchis, 145.

Crested coralroot, 150.
Yellow Orchis, 47.

Cross fertilisation, xviii.

Cypripedia of Europe, 13.

Cypripedium, 3.
acaule, Io.
arietinum, 8.
candidum, 14.
hirsutum, 15.

Key to species, 8.
pubescens, 16.
regina, IT.

Darwin, vi.
Darwin’s experiments with gyro-
stachys, 88.
observations on Listera, 105.
Dead insects in the blossom, 13.
Downy Rattlesnake Plantain, 116.
Dwarf Orchis, 33.

Early Coralroot, 139.
Epipactis latifolia, 83.
viridiflora, 82.

Espiritu Santo, 9.

Fen Orchis, 128.
Fragrant Lady’s-Tresses, 97.
Fringed Orchis, Large Purple, 56.

I 56 INDEX—(Continued)

Fringed Orchis
Prairie White, 56.
Smaller Purple, 59.
White, 51.
Yellow, 48.

Fringeless Purple Orchis, 63.

Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis,
xv, 15.

Grass-leaved Lady’s-Tresses, 98.

Grass-pink, 147.

Gray, Asa, vi.

Green Adder’s-mouth, 123.
Orchis, Tall Leafy, 36.
Wood Orchis, Small, 43.

Grew, Nehemias, xix.

Gyrostachys, 87.
cernua, 95.

Darwin’s experiments, 88.
gracilis, 100.

Key to species, g1.
odorata, 97.

plantaginea, 94.

przecox, 98.
Romanzofhana, 92.
simplex, 99.

Habenaria, 24.
blephariglottis, 51, 56.
bracteata, 42.
chlorantha, 31.
ciliaris, 47, 48, 53.
clavellata, 43.
cristata, 47.
dilatata, 39.
flava, 45.
grandiflora, 57.
Hookeriana, 30.
hyperborea, 36.
integra, 35, 41.

Habenaria, Key to species, 27.

lacera, 54.

leuocophza, 56.

nivea, 34.

obtusata, 33.

orbiculata, 25, 29, 53-

peramoena, 63.

psycodes, 59.
Heart-leaved Twayblade, 109.
Helleborine, 82.
Hexalectris aphyllus, 150.
Hooded Lady’s-Tresses, 92.
Hooker’s Orchid, 30, 58.
Humboldt, xii.

“Illustrated Flora,’ Britton and
Brown, ix.
Insect agency, xix.

Lady’s-Slipper, 3.
Tresses, 87.
Large Coralroot, 141.
Purple Fringed Orchis, 56.
Round-leaved Orchis, 29.
Yellow Lady’s-Slipper, 15.
Twayblade, 127.
Leptorchis, 125.
liliifolia, 127.
Loeselii, 128.
Lesser Rattlesnake Plantain, 115.
Limodorum tuberosum, 147.
Linnzus, viii, xix.
Listera, 103.
convallarioides, 108.
cordata, 109.
Key to species, 107.
Little Lady’s-Tresses, gg.
Loesel’s Twayblade, 128.
Long-bracted Orchis, 42.

INDEX— (Continued) 157

Menzies’ Rattlesnake Plantain, 118.

Metamorphosis, Goethe’s theory,
xv.

Moccasin Flower, ro.

Miller, 17.

Mycological clubs, v.

Night insects, 30.

Nodding Lady’s-Tresses, 95.
Pogonia, 72.

Nomenclature, changes in, vill.

Orchis, 19.
Key to species, 20.
spectabilis, 20.

Pale-green Orchis, Small, 45.
Parts of a flower modified leaves,
xv.
Peramium, III.
Key to species, 115.
Menziesii, 118.
pubescens, 116.
repens, I15.
Pink Lady’s Slipper, ro.
Pogonia, 65.
affinis, 76.
divaricata, 73.
Key to species, 69.
ophioglossoides, 69.
trianthophora, 72.
verticillata, 74.
Prairie White Fringed Orchis, 56.
Purple Fringed Orchis, Large, 56.
Smaller, 59.
Puttyroot, 151.

Ragged Orchis, 54.
Ram’s-head Lady’s-Slipper, 8.
Rattlesnake Plantain, 111.

Reproductive organs, xvii.

Rose Pogonia, 69.

Round-leaved Orchis, Large, 29.
Small, 23.

“Sabot de la Viérge,”’ 17.

Saprophytes, 134.

Self fertilisation, 38, 68.

Showy Lady’s-Slipper, 11.
Orchis, 20.

Slender Lady’s-Tresses, 100.

Small-flowered coralroot, 140.
Green Wood Orchis, 43.
Northern Bog Orchis, 33.
Pale-green Orchis, 45.
Round-leaved Orchis, 23.
Southern Yellow Orchis, 41.
White Lady’s-Slipper, 14.
Yellow Lady’s-Slipper, 17.

Smaller Purple Fringed Orchis, 59.
Whorled Pogonia, 76.

Snake Mouth, 65.

Southern Small White Orchis, 34.
Twayblade, 110.

Spider lurking in blossoms, 55, 62.

Sphinx moth, 26.
day-flying, 62.

Spreading Pogonia, 73.

Sprengel, xix.

Striped Coralroot, 143.

Structure of orchids, xvi.

Tall Leafy Green Orchis, 36, 39.
White Bog Orchis, 37, 39.

Terrestrial roots, xiv.

Thoreau, 57.

“Three Birds,” 72.

Tipularia unifolia, 145.

Tubercled Orchis, 45.

Twayblade, 103, 125.

I 58 INDEX—(Continued)

Vanilla, 67.

Wasps, 83.

White Adder’s-mouth, 122.
Bog Orchis, Tall, 37, 39.
Fringed Orchis, 51.

Fringed Orchis, Prairie, 56.
Orchis, Southern Small, 34.

Whorled Pogonia, 74.
Smaller, 76.

Wide-leaved Lady’s-Tresses, 94.
Wister’s Coralroot, 140.

Yellow Fringed Orchis, 48.
Lady’s-Slipper, Large, 15.
Lady’s-Slipper, Small, 17.
Orchid, Small Southern, 41.
Orchis, Crested, 47.