CLASS GYNANDRIA. 183 



and wet meadows which have never been plowed, is 

 the Pogonia (formerly Arethusa) ophioglossoides. It 

 has a small fibrous root, the scape furnished with one 

 oval leaf, and a leaf-like bracte almost immediately 

 under the flower, which is rose color, or pale purple. 

 Its character is to have 5 distinct petals without glands, 

 a sessile lip, hooded (or drawn up at the sides), and 

 internally crested (or fringed) ; the pollen farin- 

 aceous. 



About the month of June, in the same mossy 

 swamps with the preceding, may not unfrequently be 

 found a still more curious and elegant purple flowered 

 plant of the Orchideje, a true Arethusa, the species 

 A. bulbosa. The whole plant is scarcely a span high ; 

 its root is a small round tuber sending up a spathe, 

 sheathed by an abortive leaf, and terminated mostly 

 by a single large flower, though sometimes by 2 some- 

 what remote from each other ; after a time, a linear 

 radical leaf is often sent up. The flower has a very 

 marked character of ringency, and consists of 5 petals, 

 connate, (or growing together) at the base. The lip be- 

 neath growing to the column (or styles), cucullate (or 

 hooded) above, and crested internally. 



But one of the most elegant of all our swamp plants 

 of this tribe is the Calopogon of Brown, Cymhidium of 

 Willdenow, which flowers about July, and is common 

 throughout the United States. The petals are 5, 

 distinct ; the lip behind (or inverted), unguiculate (or 

 narrower below) ; the lamina conspicuously bearded. 

 The column is free (or unconnected), and the pollen 

 angular. Almost the only species is the C. pulckel- 

 lus, which has a tuberous small root, sword-shaped, 

 almost plaited, radical leaves, and a scape with several 

 large purple flowers. 



Another genus, of rather frequent occurrence in 

 dry woods, near the roots of trees, is the Mirfaxis, 



