THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



Vol. 13 April, 1917 No. 4 



Royalty in the Plant Kingdom 



or 



A Glimpse of Court Life at the Court of the Royal 

 Lady-Slipper (Cypripedium reginae Walt) 



E. Eugene Barker 



Assistant Professor of Plant Breeding, Cornell University 



"Rushes tilting their burnished spears, 

 These are her courtly cavaliers, 

 Heart of my heart, we forswear the rose. 

 We have been where the lady-slipper grows." 



With these words the poet acknowledges the stately graces of a 

 wild flower that outvies the charms of that queen of flowers, the 

 rose itself. Any person, who has been privileged to see this flower 

 growing in its native habitat, rising regal and stately from softest 

 cushions of exquisite mosses and bearing full flowers of purple and 

 white, must be constrained to agree with him. 



Not a little of this plant's charm is due to the glamour of its 

 surroundings and to its habits. Exclusive to a degree, it prefers 

 the retreat of some cedar swamp or sphagnum bog, where its thick, 

 fibrous roots penetrate the cool substratum of muck, and its broad, 

 ribbed leaves expand in the hot humid air that swathes such places 

 during the intense days of summer. About the last week of June, 

 usually, the stout hairy stem with its great column of leaves attains 

 full height and discloses flower-buds at the top — one, often two, 

 occasionally three, round as nuts and creamy white. They are 

 nodding and modest at first; later, as they grow in size, they are 

 lifted, and one fine day the sepals are unfurled as gleaming white 

 banners, and the great inflated pouches flushed with royal purple 

 are borne proudly erect at the top of the stem. 



One feels, as he stumbles upon a group of these magnificent 

 plants, in some wilderness, that he has bltmdered into an en- 

 chanted precinct, where they are holding court in a different world 



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