HABENARIA 39 



6. TALL WHITE BOG ORCHIS 



Hahenaria dilatata (Pursh) Hook. (Plates XVII., Fig. 2, 



and XVIII.) 



The Tall White Bog Orchis, or Northern Orchis, as 

 Baldwin calls it, is doubtless, he says, "associated in many 

 a mind with a Maine carry, a White Mountain flume, or a 

 Green Mountain notch. Perhaps," he adds, "you recall 

 the very spot, a green nook near the limpid pool in which 

 you dipped your hands; or it may have been higher up, 

 where white-throated sparrows were whistling through the 

 mist, and icy springs came trickling through beds of moss and 

 snowberry, and the bleak summit was almost gained. 



"This orchis is one of the most stately children of the 

 forest, and her velvety spike, springing out of rank sedges 

 and ferns, catches the eye at once, or where the plant grows 

 profusely, so perfumes the air as to need no other sign of its 

 presence." 



So many have thought it a less luxuriant form of the 

 preceding species, the Tall Leafy Green Orchis, that it 

 has been stated that the flowers are white in the open and 

 green in the woods; but this species holds its colour pretty 

 steadily. It is a pure white, though occasionally plants have 

 been found with a spike tinged with pink or purple. 



The leafy stem is more slender and taller than in the 

 Tall Leafy Green Orchis. It grows from one to two feet 

 in height and its sheathing leaves are narrower, less than an 

 inch in width and from two to ten inches long. The sharp 



