64 WILD FLOWERS. 



The butterfly-orchis {Hahenaria hifolia) is 

 another flower which by its beauty and fre- 

 quency chiims our notice. It has white frai^rant 

 blossoms, the acent of which is considerably 

 increased in the evening. It blooms in June 

 in the moist copse, and though nmch like a 

 butterfly, yet resembles some smaller and more 

 slender winged insect. No hothouse flower is 

 more delicately beautiful than this simple tenant 

 of llie woods, which so often lives and dies un- 

 seen by the eye of man. 



A verv pretty but very small species of orchis, 

 called ladies' tresses, {Neottia spiralis,) is com- 

 mon on dry hilly pastures, but so uncertain in 

 its appearance, that we cannot depend on finding 

 a single plant in the next summer on a field 

 decked this year with thousands. A field in 

 the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, Avas, in 

 the summer of 1843, so full of it, that one 

 might gather it at almost every step. In the 

 Augnst following, not a stem or leaf indicated 

 that it had ever grown there. This flower had 

 several old names. It was called sweet-cods, 

 sweet-cullins, and stander grass. 



In considering the orchises we liave rather 

 anticipated the season of the year, as several of 

 them grow in the later months. We may, how- 

 ever, with tolerable certainty expect to find in 

 the May woods, a pretty and well-known blossom 

 the wild strawberry-flower, {Fragaria vesca,) 

 which blows both now and in June. The patches 

 of this meek white flower lie among its leaves 

 on the grassy bank which skirts the wood, and 



