HABENARIA 35 



will see that the ribs of the ovaries are straight instead of 

 being twisted around as they are in every other orchid we 

 have described. This brings the lip on the top of the blos- 

 som and causes the long and rather straight and slender 

 spur to hang from above, instead of from beneath the flower. 



Why should this species have the stem so strangely twisted 

 and the ovary so straight ? How do the insects accommodate 

 themselves to this spur that arches in the air instead of 

 swinging from under the lip .'' The questions are hard to 

 answer, for the orchid is rare to find, since it is a denizen of 

 the pine barren bogs from Delaware to Florida and almost 

 as shy as its Southern yellow mate, Hahenaria Integra.^ 



Whoever will find it and spend a week of days in rubber 

 boots watching its winged guests come and go, to see whether 

 they stand on their heads to enter and whether they fly 

 away pollen laden, may solve a mystery that dates back 

 to prehistoric days. Perhaps there are some odd manners 

 left over from the Tertiary age, when plants that are now 

 found only in fossil form on the pine barrens were the 

 progenitors of the modern orchid. Possibly the straight 

 ovary is a relic of an earlier simpler form of orchid, and the 

 twisted ovary a concession to the manners of insects of later 

 days, and possibly it is because the insects are not well 

 adapted to the overarching spur, that the plant is so 

 rare. 



*Dr. Britton of the New York Botanical Garden says that he has gathered it but once, 

 ■and that it was an exquisite and graceful little thing. Dr. Rydberg, an authority on orchids, 

 says regretfully that he has never gathered it, and even pressed specimens are rare. 



