100 OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS 



their minds the history of a forgotten past, and the mystery 

 of Hfe in the presence of a significant but unnoticeable 

 flower. It blossoms in August and September. 



7. THE SLENDER LADY's-TRESSES 



Gyrosiachys gracilis (Bigelow) Kuntze. (Plate XLL, Fig. 2.) 



No one could mistake the Slender Lady's-Tresses, which 

 look as though the fairies had threaded spikes of white coral 

 in stalks of grass and twisted them for fun, as children do a 

 string that is to twirl a ball. Around and around in a 

 close-pressed single row these little white flowers, insignifi- 

 cant as individuals, form an odd artistic spike. From 

 a cluster of tuberous roots rises the bare smooth stem with 

 small, sharp-pointed bracts that soon fall off. A few ovate or 

 ovate lanceolate leaves, not more than two inches long and 

 often shorter, rise from small leaf stalks at the base and often 

 wither before the flowers come. The effect is generally 

 that of a green grass stalk with a twisted three-inch spike. 

 It averages eight inches to a foot in height, but may grow 

 two feet high. The minute fragrant flowers are barely a 

 quarter of an inch long, and all turn abruptly to the left, 

 following each other closely up the stalk in a spiral that 

 winds, sometimes once or twice, but oftener five or six times, 

 around the stem. 



Minute as the flowers are, they show when highly mag- 

 nified, as in Plate XXXVI. , that when the blossom first 

 opens, the closely pressed upper sepal and two upper petals 



