OUR MOCCASIN FLOWERS AT HOAlli. 8 1 



OUR MOCCASIN FLOWERS AND OTHER ORCHIDS 



AT HOME. 



By Grace Greylock Niles. 



The rarest of all rare blossoms are the Orchids — a family con- 

 sisting of flowers with strange fantastic forms, and secret and inac- 

 cessible homes. A'ery few species choose dry rocky soil, although 

 these delicate plants readily adapt themselves to their environments 

 throughout a broad and variable continental range. 



In May and June a brief glance through the bogs of Berkshire 

 and Bennington and northward will reveal some of the most luxu- 

 riant groups of our moccasin-tlowers and other orchids to be 

 found in the world. Along the slopes of the Hoosac Highlands 

 are several slowly drained swamps where many moccasin-flowers 

 and tall spikes of habenaria flourish. In the Swamp of Oracles, 

 northward in Bennington County, grows the greatest profusion 

 of orchids which the writer has observed in this region, there 

 being represented five species of the moccasin-flowers of genus 

 Cypripcdiuin, — an unusual report so far southward in New 

 England. 



The orchid family in these states consists of fifteen genera and 

 no less than sixty species. The Cypripcdinnis, commoidy known 

 as lady's slipper, moccasin-flowers and whip-poor-will shoes, are 

 among the most showy of the orchids. There are only thirteen 

 native Cxpripcdiums on the continent, and the finding of five of 

 this number in one small swamp area in the Hoosac Valley region 

 emphasizes the adaptation of the soil to the growth of Orchidaceae. 



Our moccasin-flowers, as the name implies, are shoe-shaped, 

 or pouch-like ; the grace of the whole plant and the dainty poise 

 of the undulating sepals and petals, give a certain charm to these 

 alert blossoms, nodding in the dense glooms of the boglands, or 

 bordering the rocky edges of the marsh, amid rich piles of decay- 

 ing logs and brush, where the whip-poor-will rears her young 

 and feeds upon the insects attracted to these orchids. It is not 

 at all strange that they have been deemed the foot-gear of these 

 melancholy birds who haunt the deepest shades of the woodlands. 



