74 THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND 
more numerous and purplish blossoms, it has a better claim to 
attention, but I fear that neither species will ever have its 
praises celebrated in any but the heaviest prose. 
Aplectrum hyemale, the Winter Aplectrum, has a bulb like a 
crocus, and on digging this up, two or more are found con- 
nected with it, as offsets, generally in a horizontal line like 
beads on a string. (See root of Tipularia, fig. 27.) Each 
“requires two years for its perfect development, and dies at 
the end of the third,” after producing a scape of flowers; and 
as each year one bulb shrivels and another is added, the scape 
may almost be said to keep in motion. The character of the 
root has given the popular name of “Adam and Eve” to this 
Orchid, and the bulbs are worn as amulets by the southern 
negroes and poor whites, who also place the (separated) bulbs 
in water and according as Adam or Eve “pops up,” calculate 
the chances of retaining a friend’s affection, of “getting work, 
or of living in peace with neighbors ;” while Pursh tells us that 
the sticky matter of which they are composed is mixed with 
water and used by thrifty housewives to mend their crockery, 
and Putty-root is the more widely known name at the North. 
Like Calypso borealis, it sends up its single distinct leaf at the 
end of summer or early in September, in rich dry woods. A 
stiff, dark purple horn first pricks the ground, rises slowly, for 
it has a long and severe life before it, and when it grudgingly 
uncurls, shows a coarse leaf, greenish on the upper side and 
threaded with numerous white veins. Crushed down and 
bleached by the snows, it presents itself in the spring in a 
very wrinkled condition, holding on bravely till the plant 
flowers, when it withers away. Barton styles it the “ Double- 
bulbed Corallorhiza,” and criticises Pursh and Willdenow for 
endowing it with two leaves. The flowers resemble in shape 
those of C. odontorhiza, and, as the Greek substantive signifies, 
are spurless. The sepals and petals are dull yellow tipped 
with brown; the lip white, flecked with purple, and the per- 
