i8o NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



Orchid Hunting 



How would you like to have a hobby which would take you 

 far away from city streets into the deepest woods, — a hobby 

 which would offer unsolved problems for you to work out and 

 new discoveries for you to make? That is what orchid-htmting 

 means to me. Few of our plants have been so thoroughly studied 

 as our New England orchids, and few of them can present so 

 many unanswered questions. 



It was my good luck, a few years ago, to make the acquain- 

 tance of one of the rarest of them. I was at a boys' camp in 

 New Hampshire at the time. One day I found a plant new to 

 me, and on looking it up in the flower guides I found it called 

 "rare." That aroused my interest. I began to keep my eyes 

 open, and in a few days I had located almost ten thousand plants 

 of this "rare species." I mentioned the fact to a botanist I 

 knew and he asked me to "write up" what I had seen for a 

 scientific paper. My first article was short, — just a few words 

 telling that I had found the Nodding Pogonia. Inside of a few 

 days I had letters from a number of nature students asking for 

 particulars. I was stumped, for I hadn't noticed much. That 

 set me thinking. Here were men who had devoted years to the 

 study of plants asking me, a boy still in short trousers, for in- 

 formation. The next year I made the best of my opportunity, 

 and by the next winter I could answer some questions in regard 

 to the Nodding Pogonia. But questions kept coming. How ' does 

 it grow? What color are the flowers? What insects visit it? 

 Have you ever looked at the roots? Manifestly, I had much to 

 learn. In order to really understand this one plant, I had to 

 know its relatives. Then one day I received a telegram from 

 a well-known amateur botanist: 



"Arrive Squam Lake 6:55 to-morrow night. Expect you to 

 show me Haben aria fimbriata." I gasped. Habenaria fimbriata, 

 the wonderful large purple-fringed orchid, grew somewhere near 

 Squam Lake. That much I knew. It would not do for me to 

 disappoint the botanist after he had made the long day's trip 

 from Boston and it was too late to stop him. Plainly it was 

 up to me to find the plant. That afternoon I slung my collect- 

 ing-case on my back and started for Crystal Peak, for I had 

 heard that the plants might be found there. For several hours 



