XIII 



CORALLORHIZA 



CORALROOT. (Plate LI.) 



Does every family have its degenerate members ? In 

 the social world degeneration seems to mean the ability to 

 djo without something that has grown to be a necessity to 

 everybody else. To do without clothes, or cooked food, or 

 manners, would imply some kind of degeneration, although 

 the individual that had reverted to such aboriginal habits 

 might be a very well- developed specimen of humanity. 

 Possibly the orchids, if they could grasp their relation to each 

 other, would class the Coralroots as the degenerates of 

 their family, for the reason that they do without leaves. 

 Certainly leaves seem to be essential to every well-regulated 

 plant, as clothes to a human being; but in the woods that are 

 glorified by the Cypripedium and Habenaria we come 

 upon a leafless, greenless, uncanny plant that lives the life 

 of a beggar, and yet is proud withal, for it has its spotted 

 banner and its insect servitors, and it keeps up the family 

 traditions in every way except that it has no chlorophyl. 



Possibly chlorophyl, the green-making granules that 

 crowd the cells of the leaf and stem, bears the same relation 

 to the flower world as does the gold that circulates in the 



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