ORCHID-HUNTING 157 



can be met with from May to September. There is 

 the beautiful golden whip-poor-will's shoe, in two 

 sizes (Cypripedium hirsutum, and Cypripedium parvi- 

 florum), and those lovely nymphs, rose-purple Are- 

 thusa (Areihusa bulbosa), and Calypso (Calypso bore- 

 alls), with her purple blossom varied with pink and 

 shading to yellow. 



One of the fascinations of orchid-hunting is the 

 fact that you may suddenly light upon a strange 

 orchid growing in a place which you have passed for 

 years. Such a happening came to me the day when I 

 first found the rose pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides). 

 I was following a cow-path through the hard hack 

 pastures which I had traveled perhaps a hundred 

 times before. Suddenly, as I came to the slope of 

 the upper pasture, growing in the wet bank of the 

 deep-cut trail, my eye caught sight of a little flower 

 of the purest rose-pink, the color of the peach-blos- 

 som, with a deeply fringed drooping lip, the whole 

 flower springing from a slender stem with oval, 

 grass-like leaves. To me it had a fragrance like al- 

 monds, although others have found in it the scent 

 of sweet violets or of fresh raspberries. It is the 

 pogonia family which includes the rarest of all of 

 our orchids, the almost unknown smaller whorled 

 pogonia (Pogonia affinis). Few indeed have been the 

 botanists who have seen even a pressed specimen of 

 this strange flower. 



Two weeks after I found the rose pogonia, I came 

 again to visit her. To my astonishment and delight, 

 by her side was growing another orchid, like some 



