CYPRIPEDIUM ARIETINUM. 

 RAM'S-HEAD MOCCASIN-FLOWER. 



NATURAL ORDER, ORCHIDACEyE. 



CYPRIPEDIUM ARIETINUM, Alton.— Stem leafy; leaves elliptical, striate-veined. Sepals three, 

 distinct (the two lower not united), linear-lanceolate, the upper oblong-ovate, acuminate- 

 two lateral petals linear ; lip as long as the petal, saccate, obconic. Stems usually clus- 

 tered, flexuous, eight to twelve inches high, lower part sheathed. Leaves three to five, two 

 to three inches long by one-half to one inch wide, sessile, amplexicaul. Flower mostly 

 solitary, with a leafy bract at the base. Segments about equal in length, the upper 

 one as broad as the other four together. ( lVoo(/'s Class- Book of Botany. See also Gra/s 

 Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States.) 



HOUGH a person may have but a slight acquaintance 

 with flowers, the one we ilkistrate will be readily recog- 

 nized as belonging to the great Orchis family, or, as a botanist 

 would say, to OrchidacccE. There is something so odd in the ap- 

 pearance of an orchid flower, and the oddity is so peculiar, that 

 after one has learned to distinguish a few, there is litde difficulty 

 in recognizing one of the family whenever it is met with. This 

 natural resemblance is in a great measure the foundation of what 

 is now known as the natural system of botany. In comparatively 

 recent times the number or arrangement of the stamens or of other 

 parts of the flower, decided the class or order to which a plant in 

 question belonged ; and this seemed so simple and so easy a way 

 of getting knowledge, that many regretted w^hen the natural sys- 

 tem was introduced, and the old artificial systems were set aside. 

 How very ardficial some of these systems were, may be under- 

 stood when the reader learns that under the sexual system of 

 Linnaeus, our plant would be in the class Gynandria, and that in 

 the same class might be found the Passion flower, and the " Dutch- 

 man's Pipe" or Aristolochial Linnaeus himself saw the incon- 



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