THE RARE LARGE 



PURPLE-FRINGED 



ORCHID 



Flowers and insects — espe- 

 cially bees and butterflies — 

 evolved side by side, and 

 each is dependent on the 

 other. Many wild plants, re- 

 moved to the garden from 

 woods or marsh, cannot 

 make seeds because of the 

 lack of their insect agents. 

 The orchids advertise their 

 nectar and pollen (for bee- 

 bread for young bees) by 

 color and fragrance. The 

 latter is probably the more 

 potent, for a bee does not see 

 well except when very near 

 the object, but it smells a 

 flower at a great distance and 

 will go unerringly even to a 

 hidden flower, which, more- 

 over, seems but faintly fra- 

 grant to us. In the summers 

 of years past, these large 

 fringed orchids have stood 

 erect like purple shadows of 

 the dark tree trunks in the 

 woodland marsh. Today they 

 are too nearly extinct to be 

 seen frequently. Butterflies 

 and moths cannot draw up 

 nectar from the long spurs of 

 the purple-fringed orchid 

 (Blephariylottis grandifiora) 

 without transferring the 

 pollen, decorating their eyes 

 and heads with sticky pollen 

 masses again and again 



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