Wild-Flower Study 



525 



Showy ladies' slipper 

 Photo by Verne Morton. 



THE YELLOW LADY'S SLIPPER 

 Teacher's Story 



"Graceful and tall the slender drooping stem, 



With two broad leaves below, 

 Shapely the flower so lightly poised between, 



And warm its rosy glow." ELAINE GOODALE. 



These showy flowers look so strange in our woodlands that we gaze at 

 them as curiously as we might upon a veiled lady from the Orient who 

 had settled in our midst. There is something abnormal and mysterious 

 in the shape of this flower, and though it be called the lady's slipper, yet it 

 would be a strange foot that could fit such a slipper; and if it is strange 

 at the first glance, it is still more so as we try to compare it with other 

 flowers. There are two long sepals that extend up and down, the lower 

 one being made up of two grown together but the "seam" does not 

 show. The sepals are yellow, and are wider than the two long streamers 

 that extend out at right angles to them, and which are petals ; the brighter 

 color of the latter, their markings of reddish dots, the hairs near their 

 bases, all go to show that these petals, although so different in shape, 

 belong to the same series as the big lower petal which is puffed out into a 

 sac, shaped like a deep, long bowl, with its upper edges incurved. If we 



