From Blue to Purple 



either one or both of his large, projecting eyes are pressed against 

 the sticky button-shaped disks to which the pollen masses are 

 attached by a stalk, and as he raises his head to depart, feeling 

 that he is caught, he gives a little jerk that detaches them, and 

 away he flies with these still fastened to his eyes. 



Even while he is flying to another flower, that is to say, in 

 half a minute, the stalks of the pollen masses bend downward 

 from the perpendicular and slightly toward the centre, or just far 

 enough to require the moth, in thrusting his probosis into the 

 nectary, to strike the glutinous, sticky stigma. Now, withdraw- 

 ing his head, either or both of the golden clubs he brought in 

 with him will be left on the precise spot where they will fertilize 

 the flower. Sometimes, but rarely, we catch a butterfly or moth 

 from the smaller or larger purple orchids with a pollen mass 

 attached to his tongue, instead of to his eyes; this is when he 

 does not make his entrance from the exact centre — as in these 

 flowers he is not obliged to do — and in order to reach the nectary 

 his tongue necessarily brushes against one of the sticky anther 

 sacs. The performance may be successfully imitated by thrust- 

 ing some blunt point about the size of a moth's head, a dull pen- 

 cil or a knitting-needle, into the flower as an insect would enter. 

 Withdraw the pencil, and one or both of the pollen masses 

 will be found sticking to it, and already automatically changing 

 their attitude. In the case of the large, round-leaved orchis, 

 whose greenish-white flowers are fertilized in a similar manner 

 by the sphinx moth, the anther sacs converge, like little horns; 

 and their change of attitude while they are being carried to fer- 

 tilize another flower is quite as exquisitely exact. 



Usually in wetter ground than we find its more beautiful 

 big sister growing in, most frequently in swamps and bogs, the 

 Smaller Purple-fringed Orchis {H. psycodes) lifts its perfumed 

 lilac spires. Thither go the butterflies and long-lipped bees to 

 feast in July and August. Inasmuch as without their aid the orchid 

 must perish from its inability to set fertile seed, no wonder it 

 woos its benefactors with a showy mass of color, charming fringes, 

 sweet perfume, and copious draughts of nectar, and makes their 

 visits of the utmost value to itself by the ingenious mechanism 

 described above. Here is no waste of pollen; that is snugly 

 packed in little bundles, ready to be carried off, but placed where 

 they cannot come in contact with the adjoining stigm.a, since 

 every orchid, almost without exception, refuses to be deteriorated 

 through self-fertilization. " 



From New Jersey and Illinois southward, particularly in 

 mountainous regions, if not among the mountains themselves, 

 the Fringeless Purple Orchis {H. peramoena) may be found bloom- 

 ing in moist meadows through July and August. Moisture, from 



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