Part 5 (1/2)
_Flowering Season_--July-August.
_Distribution_--Northeastern United States and eastern Canada to Newfoundland.
One who selfishly imagines that all the floral beauty of the earth was created for man's sole delight will wonder why a flower so exquisitely beautiful as this dainty little orchid should be hidden in inaccessible peat-bogs, where overshoes and tempers get lost with deplorable frequency, and the water-snake and bittern mock at man's intrusion of their realm by the ease with which they move away from him. Not for man, but for the bee, the moth, and the b.u.t.terfly, are orchids where they are and what they are.
Yellow-fringed Orchis
_Habenaria ciliaris_
_Flowers_--Bright yellow or orange, borne in a showy, closely set, oblong spike, 3 to 6 in. long. The lip of each flower copiously fringed; the slender spur 1 to 1-1/2 in. long; similar to White-fringed Orchis (see above); and between the two, intermediate pale yellow hybrids may be found. _Stem:_ Slender, leafy, 1 to 2-1/2 feet high. _Leaves:_ Lance-shaped, clasping.
_Preferred Habitat_--Moist meadows and sandy bogs.
_Flowering Season-_--July-August.
_Distribution_--Vermont to Florida; Ontario to Texas.
Where this brilliant, beautiful orchid and its lovely white sister grow together in the bog--which cannot be through a very wide range, since one is common northward, where the other is rare, and _vice versa_--the Yellow-fringed Orchis will be found blooming a few days later. In general structure the plants closely resemble each other.
From Ontario and the Mississippi eastward, and southward to the Gulf, the Tubercled or Small Pale Green Orchis _(H. flava)_ lifts a spire of inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, more attractive to the eye of the structural botanist than to the aesthete. It blooms in moist places, as most orchids do, since water with which to manufacture nectar enough to fill their deep spurs is a prime necessity. Orchids have arrived at that pinnacle of achievement that it is impossible for them to fertilize themselves. More than that, some are absolutely sterile to their own pollen when it is applied to their stigmas artificially! With insect aid, however, a single plant has produced more than 1,000,700 seeds. No wonder, then, that as a family, they have adopted the most marvellous blandishments and mechanism in the whole floral kingdom to secure the visits of that special insect to which each is adapted, and, having secured him, to compel him unwittingly to do their bidding. In the steaming tropical jungles, where vegetation is luxuriant to the point of suffocation, and where insect life swarms in myriads undreamed of here, we can see the best of reasons for orchids mounting into trees and living on air to escape strangulation on the ground, and for donning larger and more gorgeous apparel to attract attention in the fierce compet.i.tion for insect trade waged about them. Here, where the struggle for survival is incomparably easier, we have terrestrial orchids, small, and quietly clad, for the most part.
Calopogon; Gra.s.s Pink
_Calopogon pulch.e.l.lus (Limodorum tuberosum)_
_Flowers_--Purplish pink, 1 in. long, 3 to 15 around a long, loose spike. Sepals and petals similar, oval, acute; the lip on upper side of flower is broad at the summit, tapering into a claw, flexible as if hinged, densely bearded on its face with white, yellow, and magenta hairs (_Calopogon_ = beautiful beard). Column below lip (ovary not twisted in this exceptional case); sticky stigma at summit of column, and just below it a 2-celled anther, each cell containing 2 pollen ma.s.ses, the grain lightly connected by threads. _Scape:_ 1 to 1-1/2 ft.
high, slender, naked. _Leaf:_ Solitary, long, gra.s.s-like, from a round bulb arising from bulb of previous year.
_Preferred Habitat_--Swamps, cranberry bogs, and low meadows.
_Flowering Season_--June-July.
_Distribution_--Newfoundland to Florida, and westward to the Mississippi.
Fortunately this lovely orchid, one of the most interesting of its highly organized family, is far from rare, and where we find the Rose Pogonia and other bog-loving relatives growing, the Calopogon usually outnumbers them all. _Limodorum_ translated reads meadow-gift; but we find the flower less frequently in gra.s.sy places than those who have waded into its favorite haunts could wish.
Arethusa; Indian Pink
_Arethusa bulbosa_
_Flowers_--1 to 2 in. long, bright purple pink, solitary, violet scented, rising from between a pair of small scales at end of smooth scape from 5 to 10 in. high. Lip dropping beneath sepals and petals, broad, rounded, toothed, or fringed, blotched with purple, and with three hairy ridges down its surface. _Leaf:_ Solitary, hidden at first, coming after the flower, but attaining length of 6 in. _Root:_ Bulbous.
_Fruit:_ A 6-ribbed capsule, 1 in. long, rarely maturing.
_Preferred Habitat_--Northern bogs and swamps.