Red and Indefinites 



and somewhat united at the base ; spur yellowish, the oval 

 lip white, spotted and lined with purplish ; 3-lobed, wavy 

 edged. Scape, 8 to 20 in. tall, colored, furnished with several 

 flat scales. Leaves: None. Root: A branching, coral-like 

 mass. 



Preferred Habitat — Dry woods. 



Flowering Season — July — September. 



Distribution — Nova Scotia, westward to British Columbia ; south 

 to Florida, Missouri, and California. 



To the majority of people the very word orchid suggests a 

 millionaire's hothouse, or some fashionable florist's show window, 

 where tropical air plants send forth gorgeous blossoms, exquisite 

 in color, marvellous in form ; so that when this insignificant little 

 stalk pokes its way through the soil at midsummer and produces 

 some dull flowers of indefinite shades and no leaves at all to help 

 make them attractive, one feels that the coral-root is a very poor 

 relation of theirs indeed. The prettily marked lower lip, at once 

 a platform and nectar guide to the insect alighting on it, is all that 

 suggests ambition worthy of an orchid. 



If poverty of men and nations can be traced to certain radical 

 causes by the social economist, just as surely can the botanist ac- 

 count for loss of leaves — riches — by closely examining the poverty- 

 stricken plant. Every phenomenon has its explanation. A glance 

 at the extraordinary formation under ground reveals the fact that 

 the coral-roots, although related to the most aristocratic and highly 

 organized plants in existence, have stooped to become ghoulish 

 saprophytes. An honest herb abounds in good green coloring 

 matter (chlorophyll), that serves as a light screen to the cellular 

 juices of leaf and stem. It also forms part of its digestive apparatus, 

 aiding a plant in the manufacture of its own food out of the soil, 

 water, and gases ; whereas a plant that lives by piracy — a para- 

 site — or a saprophyte, that sucks up the already assimilated 

 products of another's decay, loses its useless chlorophyll as 

 surely as if it had been kept in a cellar. In time its equally 

 useless leaves dwindle to bracts, or disappear. Nature wastes 

 no energy. Fungi, for example, are both parasites and Sapro- 

 phytes ; and so when plants far higher up in the evolutionary scale 

 than they lose leaves and green color too, we may know they 

 are degenerates belonging to that disreputable gang of branded 

 sinners which includes the Indian-pipe, broom-rape, dodder, pine- 

 sap, and beech-drops. Others, like the gerardias and foxgloves, 

 may even now be detected on the brink of a fall from grace. 



The Early Coral-root (C. Corallorhi^d) — C. innata of Gray 

 — a similar but smaller species, whose loose spike of dull purplish 

 flowers likewise terminates a scaly purplish or yellowish scape 

 arising from a mass of short, thick, whitish, fleshy, blunt fibres, 

 may be found in the moist woods blooming in May or June. It 



372 



