XII 

 CALYPSO 



Calypso hulhosa (L.) Oakes. (Plate L.) 



In the East Indies there is a group of orchids, warmth 

 loving and beautiful, of which one species has wandered 

 over straits that were once connecting lands to the far 

 hills of our north country and has made its home under the 

 pines and damp crags, and in the cold wet woods of the 

 mountains. 



It is Calypso hulhosa. Its specific name used to be Ca- 

 lypso horealis, which meant "Nymph of the North," for the 

 flower was dedicated to the goddess Calypso. It is a 

 poetic grief to those who loved this exquisite little brilliant 

 blossom, that its bulbous root must be the excuse for its 

 revised cognomen, instead of that far North where it has 

 journeyed to bring the luxuriant touch of the South to the 

 summer. 



When Linnaeus found the blossom in the cold woods of his 

 beloved Sweden he gave it the name Cypripedium horeale 

 because its shoe-like pouch looked much like that of the 

 Lady's-Slipper. But he did not appreciate the finer points 

 of mechanism by which the orchids are now classified ac- 

 cording to the structure of their stigma and stamens. Modern 



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