A YEAR IN THE FIELDS 



few days : but pass under this tree just at 

 the right moment, say at nightfall on the 

 first or second day of its perfect inflores- 

 cence, and the air is loaded with its sweet- 

 ness ; its perfumed breath falls upon you 

 as its cool shadow does a few weeks later. 



After the linnsea and the arbutus, the 

 prettiest sweet-scented flowering vine our 

 woods hold is the common mitchella vine, 

 called squaw-berry and partridge-berry. It 

 blooms in June, and its twin flowers, light 

 cream-color, velvety, tubular, exhale a most 

 agreeable fragrance. 



Our flora is much more rich in orchids 

 than the European, and many of ours are 

 fragrant. The first to bloom in the spring 

 is the showy orchis, though it is far less 

 showy than several others. I find it in 

 May, not on hills, where Gray says it grows, 

 but in low, damp places in the woods. It 

 has two oblong shining leaves, with a scape 

 four or five inches high strung with sweet- 

 scented, pink-purple flowers. I usually find 

 it and the fringed polygala in bloom at the 

 same time; the lady's-slipper is a little 

 later. The purple fringed orchis, one of 

 the most showy and striking of all our 

 orchids, blooms in midsummer in swampy 

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