POGONIA OPHIOGLOSSOIDES. 



SNAKE-MOUTH. 



NATURAL ORDER, ORCHIDACE7E. 



PoGONiA OPHIOGLOSSOIDES, Nutt. — Root of thick fibres ; stem (six to nine inches high) bear- 

 ing a single oval or lance-oblong leaf near the middle, and a smaller one or bract near the 

 terminal flower, rarely one or two others with a flower in their axil ; lip spatulate below, 

 appressed to the column, beard crested and fringed ; flower, one inch long, sweet-scented. 

 (Gray's Mamuil of the Botany of the Northern United States. See also Chapman's Flora 

 of the Southern United States and Wood's Class-Book of Botany.) 



iRCHIDS seem at first sight calculated to shake our con- 

 fidence in the reliability of the morphological doctrine, 

 according to which all the parts of a flower are but modifications 

 of simple leaves. On closer investigation it will be seen, how- 

 ever, that hardly a better illustration of the truth of this doctrine 

 could be found than is offered by a comparison of our present 

 species, Pogonia opJiioglossoidcs, with some other species of the 

 same genus, and more especially with P. veriicillata and P. pen- 

 dula. 



In P. pcudula the stem is leafy, and there are a number of 

 axillary flowers (one to four, according to Gray ; three to seven, 

 according to Chapman), but these flowers are far from being 

 showy. The stem of P. veriicillata, on the contrary, is naked 

 (excepting some small scales at the base), and there is only one 

 whorl of leaves at the summit, at the base of the reddish-brown 

 flower. In P. opJiioglossoidcs, finally, there is one leaf acting as 

 a sheathing scale at the base, another near the middle of the 

 stem, and again a smaller leaf or bract higher up, and above this 

 a pretty rose-colored terminal flower. 



In the case of P. pcudula it might therefore be said that the 



