SOME HUMBLE ORCHIDS 127 



he perfectly understood the contrivance to secure 

 fertilization possessed by one single Orchid. 



Of the sixty species of Orchids found east of 

 the Mississippi and north of Carolina and Ten- 

 nessee, New England claims a scant fifty. Only 

 a dozen of these can be called landscape flowers, 

 even in the narrowest sense ; the rest belong to 

 the realm of the analytic botanist. 



One thing is easy to remember about an Or- 

 chid: the flower is made up of two groups, three 

 petals and three sepals, like so many of the Lily 

 tribe, its near kin; also that of the three petals 

 the lower one, acting as a lip which is always 

 noticeable, gives individuality and character to each 

 species, while the sepals or the outer three petals 

 often unite to form a sort of hood above the lip, 

 lending the flower, according to its type, the appear- 

 ance of a bird, a butterfly or some other winged 

 insect. It is this peculiar combination of pouched 

 lip and streaming petals and sepals that gives the 

 rare Calypso of cold bogs, which ventures farther 

 north than any of its brothers, creeping well up 

 into both Alaska and Labrador, a more truly 

 moccasin -like appearance than those that bear the 

 name of Moccasin Flower. Calypso's shoe, raised 

 on a stem above a single broad leaf, is dull pink 



