54 



THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 



New Hampshire. Arethusa bulbosa chooses the open cran- 

 berry swamp or the scanty shade of tamaracks. Gray calls it 

 rather scarce or local, but as at Litchfield, Conn., and near 

 Andover, Mass., where hundreds have been gathered at a time, 

 it is wont to be abundant in its pet localities, and one is justi- 

 fied in hunting for it anywhere. Its range in the Eastern 

 United States is from" North Carolina to Wisconsin and north- 

 wards," and the unsentimental Hooker states that the bulbs, 

 with us, " are used to stimulate indolent tumors, and as a cure 

 for toothache." 



The Arethusa is sometimes very 

 fragrant, as Chapman, Goodale, and 

 Burroughs in Pepacton, testify, and I 

 [ A V,i~V/ regret that it has never been my for- 



tune to find a flower possessing that 

 attraction. White varieties have been 

 reported from Plymouth and other 

 places in Massachusetts, but such in- 

 stances are said to be very rare in the 

 case of this Orchid. 



Plymouth has also furnished two 

 abnormal specimens.* " One had a 

 two-flowered scape, the flowers complete and united at the 

 base ; the other had the flowers, which were both incom- 

 plete, united throughout nearly the whole length." And even 

 these are less worthy of record than the oddity discovered 

 at New Haven, Conn., by Mr. H. M. Denslow, where "two dis- 

 tinct scapes sprang from the same bulb; one bearing the usual 

 single flower, the other, two." The genus Arethusa contains 

 but two other known species, natives respectively of Japan and 

 Guatemala, and in this genus, to quote Gray, " the lanceolate 

 sepals and petals, united at the base, ascend and arch over the 



Fig. 14. 



1. Side view of column of Are- 

 thusa. 5/, stigma. 



2 and 3. Front views of anther. 

 (From Gray's Botanical Text Book.) 



4. Seed-vessel of Arethusa. 



* See Bibliography. 



