ARETHUSA 

 Arethusa bulbosa L. (Plate XXXIV.) 



One of the most charming of the spring flowers that flut- 

 ters on its grass-Hke stem over cranberry bogs and Adiron- 

 dack swamps and salt marshes is the nymph-named 

 Arethusa, a rose-purple blossom that at first looks very like 

 the Snake-mouth. 



By plucking the plant from its wet sphagnum bed, it will 

 be seen that it grows from a small bulb instead of from a 

 fibrous root, whence its name, bulbosa. Its sheathed stem is 

 low, sometimes only five and at most ten or twelve inches 

 high, and has a single, long, grass-like leaf that may grow 

 six inches in length after the flowering time has passed. The 

 flower is large for the length of its stalk, sometimes growing 

 two inches long. It is not bent over as much as the Snake- 

 mouth, but the arching of one sepal and two petals over the 

 column gives it a characteristic poise. The other sepals 

 that are long and narrow, like the arched one, are recurved 

 and spreading, and the lip, that curiously decked banner 

 that is the honey signal to the insects, drops to the breeze a 

 broad, round, fringed and notched banner covered with pur- 

 ple blotches and ridged with three crests of fine white hairs. 



