Yellow and Orange 



a mottled rustic butterfly whose proboscis was decorated with 

 eleven pairs of pollen masses, taken from as many blossoms of the 

 pyramidal orchis. Have these flowers no mercy on their long- 

 suffering friends ? A bee with some orchid pollen-stumps at- 

 tached to its head was once sent to IVlr. Frank Cheshire, the 

 English expert who had just discovered some strange bee diseases. 

 He was requested to name the malady that had caused so ab- 

 normal an outgrowth on the bee's forehead ! 



Often found growing in the same bog with the tubercled 

 species is the Ragged or Fringed Green Orchis (//. lacera), so in- 

 conspicuous we often overlook it unawares. Examine one of the 

 dingy, greenish-yellow flowers that are set along the stem in a 

 spike to make all the show in the world possible, each with its 

 three-parted, spreading lip finely and irregularly cut into thread-like 

 fringe to hail the passing butterfly, and we shall see that it, too, 

 has made ingenious provision against the draining of its spur by 

 a visitor without proper pay for his entertainment. Even with- 

 out the gay color that butterflies ever delight in, these flowers 

 contain so much nectar in their spurs, neither butterflies nor large 

 bumblebees are long in hunting them out. In swamps and wet 

 woodland from Nova Scotia to Georgia, and westward to the Mis- 

 sissippi, the ragged orchis blooms in June or July. 



Large Yellow Pond, or Water, Lily; Cow Lily; 

 Spatter-dock 



{Nymphaea advena) Water-lily family 



{Nuphar advena of Gray) 



Flowers — Yellow or greenish outside, rarely purple tinged, 

 round, depressed, i ]4 to 3>^ in. across. Sepals 6, unequal, 

 concave, thick, fleshy ; petals stamen-like, oblong, fleshy, 

 short ; stamens very numerous, in 5 to 7 rows ; pistil com- 

 pounded of many carpels, its stigmatic disc pale red or yel- 

 low, with 12 to 24 rays. Leaves: Floating, or some im- 

 mersed, large, thick, sometimes a foot long, egg-shaped or 

 oval, with a deep cleft at base, the lobes rounded. 



Preferred Zfei^zVa/— Standing water, ponds, slow streams. 



Flowering Season — April — September. 



Distribution — Rocky Mountains eastward, south to the Gulf of 

 Mexico, north to Nova Scotia. 



Comparisons were ever odious. Because the yellow water 

 lily has the misfortune to claim relationship with the sweet- 



19 3*9 



