A PEW NATIVE ORCHIDS l8l 



had waited through the ages for Darwin, its 

 chosen interpreter, ere she yielded her secret to 

 humanity. 



And what is an orchid ? How are we to know 

 that this blossom which we plucked is an orchid ? 

 The average reader will exclaim, " Because it is 

 an air-plant" — the essential requisite, it would 

 seem, in the popular mind. Of over 3000 known 

 species of orchids, it is true a great majority are 

 air-plants, or epiphytes — growing upon trees and 

 other plants, obtaining their sustenance from the 

 air, and not truly parasitic; but of the fifty-odd 

 native species of the northeastern United States, 

 not one is of this character, all growing in the 

 ground, like other plants. It is only by the botan- 

 ical structure of the flowers that the orchid may 

 be readily distinguished, the epiphytic character 

 being of little significance botanically. 



A brief glance at this structural peculiarity 

 may properly precede our more elaborate con- 

 sideration of a few species of these remarkable 

 flowers. 



The orchids are usually very irregular, and six- 

 parted. The ovary is one -celled, and becomes a 

 pod containing an enormous yield of minute, al- 

 most spore-like, seeds (Fig. 3) in some species, as 

 in the vanilla pod, to the number of a million, and 



