64 MIDLAND NATURALIST. 
almost from the first moment my delight in the absolute beauty of 
this scene, and the unexpected renewal of acquaintance with one of 
my childhood favorites, were mixed with a feeling of wonder at 
what to me seemed a new and strange kind of environment for this 
orchid. Naturally my ideal of a habitat for Cypripedium acaule 
was that of the frigid swamps of the far Northwest where hitherto 
my best acquaintace with the species had been made; a sphagnous 
swamp where mosses took the place of soil, and all the shade was 
that of a certain conifer. There, during nearly four months of 
every year the cypripedium roots were imbedded in ice; not in 
frozen earth, but practically in ice itself. Here in this low wood- 
land of the mild South I doubt if ever in the middle of winter the 
ground freezes to the depth of aninch. The trees that make the 
shade are every one deciduous. They are nyssas, sweet gum, red 
maple, and hydrophilous oaks and ashes. No ericaceus under- 
shrubs are near; there is no sphagnum, no moss or lichen, only a 
lycopodium or two; not a plantof arethusa or pogonia, though now 
and then one sees a little green-flowered achroanthes and an aplect- 
num, but no other orchids at all; and the leaf mould in which the 
plants flourish is more moist a great deal than that of the plants 
hillside habitat in New England. Indeed, not many rods away 
from where this fine colony grows the depression of the land falls to 
that of an open shallow pond that is occupied by no trees at all, 
but by boggy rhynchosporas and other sedges, and by sagittarias, 
sauruvus and peltandras, besides the lance-leaved subaquatic 
Ranunculus obtusiusculus. I have no other equally strong contrast 
ecologic in mind as that subsisting between the Wisconsin habitat 
for Cypripedinm acaule and this of the lower Potomac in Maryland. 
It is one of the ecologic marvels of my own rather wide experience 
in North American botany. 
Once again, and within a few years, also in a locality of the 
Potomac water shed, I met with this particular lady's slipper, and 
this time high up on the northward slope of the Blue Ridge. The 
elevation was little less than a thousand feet. The ground was not 
in the least degree marshy. It was a yellow bank of sandy-clayey 
— formation. ''The associated plants were mainly low azaleas, vaccin- 
iums antennarias and hawkweeds; yet another and very striking 
contrast. 
I have been informed by that excellent Canadian botanist, Mr. 
James M. Macoun, that not far from Ottawa Cypripedium acaule, 
me nt 
