THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 



perhaps, or confounded with other species, as I have but lately 

 been able to hear of a station in Connecticut. Like the other 

 Spiranthes, it ranges as far south as Florida, and except with 

 us, appears to be common enough. Its root is a " solitary, 

 spindle-shaped or oblong tuber;" it loses its leaves, which grow 

 like those of 5. gracilis, in a cluster at the ground, at flowering, 

 and produces " very short " blossoms. 



So many weeds and wild plants have 

 white spikes or tufts of flowers that I 

 am not surprised when people to 

 whom I have shown one of our 

 Ladies' Tresses tell me they have 

 never seen it before ; and then again, 

 the time when the Ladies' Tresses are 

 due is not one when there is much 

 exploration of the fields, unless it is by 

 hunters, or " city folks" who are more 

 likely to have their eyes directed 

 upward toward a white birch they 

 want to mangle or scribble their 

 names on than toward the ground 

 they are tramping over, but there is no good reason why the 

 Rattle-snake Plantains should not be known to every one, for 

 all the year round their pretty rosetted leaves ornament the 

 woods. 



The genus Goodyera, to which they belong, contains some 

 twenty-five species, scattered over Europe, temperate and 

 tropical Asia, and North America, and forms, according to 

 Darwin, "an interesting connecting link between several very 

 distinct forms." There are points of resemblance to both 

 Orchis and Spiranthes, and accordingly Goodyera, in our bot- 

 anies, stands between these two genera. Two of our species, 

 G. pubescens and G. rcpens, are common to Great Britain, and in 

 describing the latter, which he calls a " rare Highland 



Fig. 37.— Nodding Pogonia. 

 P. pendula. 



