HABENARIA 63 



18. FRINGELESS PURPLE ORCHIS 



Hahenaria peramoena, A. Gray. (Plate XXVII.) 



It is sometimes a comfort to the lover of flowers, who 

 vainly seeks to know them by name, to find some one 

 distinctive feature by which he can quickly identify the 

 new flower that has made his walk an experience to be 

 remembered. In the bother of mentally calculating 

 whether a certain specimen of purple-fringed orchis is 

 a large specimen of H. psycodes, or a small one of H. 

 grandiflora, one is distracted from an enjoyment of its 

 beauty, and is tempted to feel a trifle of impatience at 

 the naming of names, and to wish one were back in the 

 Garden of Eden, where, according to the little boy's version, 

 "Adam called the elephant an elephant because it looked 

 like an elephant." 



But with the Fringeless Purple Orchis it is diff^erent. 

 One knows at once that because it has a long two- to seven- 

 inch spike of purple flowers that are not fringed on their 

 wide-spreading, deeply lobed lips, it is Blephariglottis 

 peramoena. In every other way it looks like the other two 

 purple Habenarias. Its long lower leaves are elliptical or 

 lanceolate. Its stem is from one to two and a half feet 

 high. Its flowers are violet-purple, arranged in a spike, 

 which is about two inches in diameter. There are sometimes 

 only a few, as in the illustration, but usually when growing 

 in fertile grounds, they are crowded on a long seven-inch 

 spike. This one feature, however, is its own. The fan-shaped 



