A BTJNCH OF HERBS . 191 



though it is far less showy than several others. I 

 find it in May, not on hills, where Gray says it 

 grows, but in low, damp places in the woods. It 

 has two ohlong shining leaves, with a scape four or 

 five inches high strung with sweet-scented, pink- 

 purple flowers. I usually find it and the fringed 

 polygala in bloom at the same time; the lady's-slip- 

 per is a little later. The purple fringed-orchis, one 

 of the most showy and striking of all our orchids, 

 blooms in midsummer in swampy meadows and in 

 marshy, grassy openings in the woods, shooting up 

 a tapering column or cylinder of pink-purple fringed 

 flowers, that one may see at quite a distance, and 

 the perfume of which is too rank for a close room. 

 This flower is, perhaps, like the English fragrant 

 orchis, found in pastures. 



No fragrant flowers in the shape of weeds have 

 come to us from the Old World, and this leads me 

 to remark that plants with sweet-scented flowers 

 are, for the most part, more intensely local, more 

 fastidious and idiosyncratic, than those without per- 

 fume. Our native thistle — the pasture thistle — ■ 

 has a marked fragrance, and it is much more shy 

 and limited in its range than the common Old World 

 thistle that grows everywhere. Our little, sweet, 

 white violet grows only in wet places, and the 

 Canada violet only in high, cool woods, while the 

 common blue violet is much more general in its 

 distribution. How fastidious and exclusive is the 

 cypripedium! You will find it in one locality in 

 the woods, usually on high, dry ground, and will 



