flowers of song and poetry. The flowers of the North woods 

 differ from the flowers of the prairie region of this state as 

 much as the flowers of Italy differ from the flowers of Min- 

 nesota. In the dark spruce and tamarack swamps you will 

 find the remarkable moccasin flowers growing here and there 

 in clumps, and peering from the thicket like enchanted wood- 

 land nymphs, and everywhere, to the intelligent lover of the 

 cutdoors, the woods are full of questions and full of mystery. 

 We have all seen many full grown moccasin flcwers of sev- 

 eral kinds, but I wonder how many citizens cf Minnesota 

 have seen a baby or seedling moccasin. Again and again I 

 have knelt on the soft moss in the swamps, and have care- 

 fully scanned over the ground as anxiously as though I had 

 been searching for a lost diamond, tut en a patch of pe.haps 

 half an acre, where three thousand shcwy moccasin plants 

 were in bloom, I have not found a single seeding. In fact 

 in all the years during which I have studied and searched for 

 irds and trees and flowers, I have not found more than half 

 dozen seedling moccasins. One is almost tempted to sug- 

 st that there is some hitch in nature's method of propa- 

 gating the moccasin flowers. The plants produce innumer- 

 able seeds, but it seems that perhaps not more than cne seed 

 out of a billion ever develops into a plant. 



Other North woods flowers are thoroughly characteristic of 

 the region. There is the poetical little twin-flower, or L'n- 

 nea, named for the great Swedish botanist, Linneaus, who 

 found it for the first time on a trip to Finland; and there is 

 the odd pitcher plant with its dark purple flowers, and its 

 leaves converted into insect-catching water pitchers. This 

 plant and the unique sundew have reversed the rules of the 

 plant and animal world. They are not eaten by animals, as 

 far as I know, but they do catch and eat animals. Various 

 flies and insects are lured to the rim of the hollow leaves of 

 the pitcher plant and slip down into the water, and the smooth 

 inside well, and some other ingenious contrivance make it 

 impossible for the fly to escape. It drowns and is practically 

 absorbed by the animal-eating plant. 



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