10 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS 



2. PINK LADY's-SLIPPER, MOCCASIN FLOWER, NOAH's ARK, 

 STEMLESS LADy's-SLIPPER 



Cypripedium acaule, Ait. (Plate IV.) 



The spring is not perfect to the lover of May who does 

 not find the Pink Lady's-Slipper. It has a roving fancy and 

 grows up hill and down dale. In Virginia it climbs to a 

 height of 4,500 feet. Although it grows chiefly in dry or 

 moist woods, and seems to prefer places where it can grow 

 on the long green graves of fallen pines, yet it is often found 

 in clefts of rocky cliffs and on sunny hillsides and in sandy 

 soil, and it has been found growing in swamps, pale in colour 

 but perfectly healthy. It has been found during the first 

 week in May in our Northern spring. Thoreau has it 

 down in his journal as due on the 20th. The city-bound 

 flower lover who escapes to the woods for the first time on 

 Decoration Day is almost sure to find it in full blossom, and 

 it often lingers through June. From the thick, fleshy root 

 spring two large, cool, oval leaves. They are sometimes 

 eight inches long and one-third as wide. Between them 

 rises a slender stalk, for it is not the flower but the plant 

 that is stemless, and on it hangs the crisp pink pouch of this 

 fragrant blossom of Venus. The inflated lip or labellum 

 gives the predominating tone, but the other parts are toned 

 in harmony. The sepals, the single one above, and the two 

 joined in one beneath, are greenish purple, as also are the 

 two long tapering petals that spread on either side of the 

 third which has been so curiously infolded into the purple 



