HO THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 



she will withdraw fresh pollen-masses, will fly to the lower 

 flowers of another plant, and thus fertilize them ; as she adds 

 to her store of honey, she perpetuates the race of our autumnal 

 Spiranthes which will yield honey to future generations of 

 bees." 



Habenaria lacera, the Greenish or Ragged-fringed Orchis, is 

 a common species at this period in open or partly shaded, v/et 

 places ; and I have known it to live on contentedly when its 

 locality had been drained and tunnelled by the gas and water 

 pipes of an encroaching town. Sweet, in his British Flower 

 Garden, calls it the Torn-flowered Habenaria, and calls atten- 

 tion to "its elegantly jagged appearance." "It must," says 

 Gray, "be very attractive to some insects, the pollen-masses 

 are so generally removed from oldish flowers and the stigma 

 fertilized. The nectary can be approached only from the front, 

 the sides being guarded by a broad and thick shield on each side 

 — the arms of the stigma much developed — above supporting 

 the anther, while its inner and concave face bears the remarka- 

 bly long and narrow viscid discs. These guards or arms of the 

 stigma project forward like beaks ; the viscid discs are " as 

 long as the stalks of the pollen-masses, are directly attached to 

 them near the middle, and nearly face each other. When de- 

 tached, a movement of depression takes place by which the 

 pollen-mass is brought down so as to be nearly parallel to the 

 disc and close to it — just in proper position to reach a stigma. 



Dwarf the flowers of H. fimbriata, increase their number, 

 deepen their color, shorten their fringes, and the Small Pur- 

 ple Fringed-Orchis, H. psycodes, stands before you : a variety, 

 some think, of the former species. It may appear in a grassy 

 ditch by a roadside ; perhaps, holding its soft plume above the 

 tangled brakes, sedges and poison ivy in your nearest meadow ; 

 always refined wherever it grows. As with H. lacera and H. 

 fimbriata, says Gray, " a development of the sides of the col- 

 umn as a kind of guard, protects the discs, preventing all ready 



