The American Botanist 



VOL. XIV 



JOLIET, ILL., FEBRUARY, 1908 



No. 1 



'Give fools their gold and knaves their power; 



Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall ; 

 Who sows a field or trains a flower 



Or plants a tree is more than all." 



— Whit tier. 



SOME WILD ORCHIDS. 



BY DR. W. VV. BAILEY. 



I 



IT is a fact well known to flower-lovers that certain plants, 

 abundant one year, may not be found again in the same 

 place or anywhere else for several seasons, thereafter. In 

 many cases these are found at times in such quantities that one 

 cannot account for their lapse on the ground of injudicious 

 plucking. The phenomenon has deeper and, to the writer, un- 

 known causes. He does not propose, at this time, to theorize 

 upon them nor to dogmatize — which is worse. 



One of these so-called "meteoric" plants is a very queer 

 orchid of the genus Pogonia. In appearance and habit it is 

 wholly unlike its pretty sister, Pogonia ophioglossoidcs, which 

 derives its specific name from the appearance of the leaf which 

 is like that of the fern Ophioglossuin or adder's tongue. The 

 freak one of wdiich I shall now speak is called Pogonia vcrti- 

 cillata from its whorl or verticil of glossy parallel-vined leavse 

 just beneath the flowers. The latter are in no way showy, but 

 queer to a degree. They are of a dusky purple hue, supported 

 on a stalk longer than the ovary. The sepals or outer floral 

 envelopes are narrowly linear, more than twice the lengtli of 



