IV 

 POGONIA 



(Plate XXVIII.) 



As ONE plunges into a swamp, still with the heat of June, 

 or into the marshy borders of an Adirondack lake, where a 

 host of shimmering sedges and feathery grasses lure one 

 into the belief that the sphagnum bed is solid earth, there will 

 surely be found, growing with the deep rose-pink blossom of 

 Limodorum (Calopogon), a flower of paler rose, and with a 

 fringed and bearded lip. It is the Rose Pogonia or Snake 

 Mouth. It serves as a type of the Pogonia, a genus of 

 thirty species that are scattered over the world, and five 

 of which grow in North America. 



The name is derived from a Greek word meaning a 

 beard, referring to the hairy crest on the lip. 



The Pogonias are low; small, grass-like plants rarely 

 growing more than a foot in height, and scantily leaved. As 

 a rule the blossoms grow singly, and are large and showily 

 coloured, poised delicately on the stalk that swings as lightly 

 and securely as the grasses. 



The absence of a spur, and the bristly beard of hairs 

 on the gaily tinted and notched or lobed lip is characteristic 

 of the Pogonias as well as of the closely related Arethusa, 



65 



