IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 187 



EXPLANATION TO PLATE, 



I. Polyporous brumalls (Per.) Fr. 



II. Hydnum coralloldes Scop. 



IIL Morchella esculenta Pers. a apore sack containing eight spores. 



IV. Gueplnia biformls Peck, b Mycelium, c spores. 



V. Lycoperdon giganteum Batsch. d Oaplllitlam, e spores. 



VI. Panus torulosus Fr. 



THE ORCHIDACE^ OF IOWA. 



BY T. J. AND M. F. L. FITZPATRICK. 



The Orchidacese comprises 5,000 species distributed among 

 410 genera. The species are mostly tropical but are found in 

 temperate climates, one as far north as the 68th degree of 

 latitude. The orchids are of especial interest to lovers of 

 flowers because of their great beauty, peculiar forms, sweet 

 fragrance and strange habits, and are great favorites with 

 floriculturists in the old world as well as in the new. 



Several of our Iowa species are of brilliant color, sweet odor, 

 and attractive form; the remaining ones being quite inconspicu- 

 ous. They all merit protection and cultivation if only to per- 

 petuate them in their native haunts. No doubt it would be 

 more or less difficult but nevertheless a very worthy effort for 

 Iowa floriculturists to collect and perpetuate cur native forms. 



At no distant date with the increasing cultivation of the soil 

 our members of this singularly beautiful family are apparently 

 destined to disappear from our state. Several of them are 

 already rare and the others fast becoming so. The changing 

 conditions incident to the settling of the state have upset the 

 pre-existing balance of nature and in the new order of things 

 many species of plants turn tramp and set out for more con- 

 genial surroundings, but our species of the orchids seem to be 

 too respectable to be tramps and like most members of a worn- 

 out nobility they face extinction. 



Of the twenty-two species belonging to the state and repre- 

 senting eleven genera our collection contains twenty. 



From the data at hand we find sixteen species in Johnson 

 county; Muscatine and Fayette counties, each with thirteen; 

 ten in Winneshiek; seven in Story; Scott, Emmet, and Jasper 

 counties, each with four; Woodbury county, three; Hamilton, 

 Delaware, Cherokee and Poweshiek counties, each with two; 

 and one in each of the following counties, viz: Jones, Howard, 



