4 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS 



climes. Only ten grow in North America, and of the 

 wonderful group six in our Eastern woods are among the 

 loveliest of our native orchids. The Cypripedia are so 

 different from all the other orchids that Darwin thought 

 that an enormous wave of extinction must have swept away 

 a multitude of intermediate forms and left this genus, now 

 widely distributed, as a record of a former and more simple 

 state of the great orchidean order. 



"The single anther," says Darwin, "which is present in all 

 other orchids, is rudimentary in Cypripedium, and is 

 represented by a singular shield-like projecting body." In 

 the pink Lady's-Slipper (Plate II.) this lies like a little 

 shelf (A) just over the stigma (C) and almost closes the 

 entrance to the insects' paradise that hangs below. 



The two fertile anthers lie just behind and beneath this 

 shelf and the stigma is on its under side. 



The gorgeously petalled and curiously fashioned flower 

 of a Cypripedium is as unlike the six-parted perianth of the 

 lily or the iris as the court train of a peeress to the simple 

 kirtle of the village maid; and yet it is easy to trace the 

 modifications. There are three outer petals and three 

 inner petals, but all so highly coloured, so beribboned and 

 fluted as to make it difficult to distinguish them. The 

 sepals, however, are the two appendages that stand, the one 

 like a banner directly over the pouch, and the other, formed 

 of two that are almost or wholly united into one, directly 

 under it. Two of the petals are the wings that fly at right 

 angles to the banner, and the third is the curiously blown 



