THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 113 
to tear them off with its mandibles. Some bees which we 
caught with pollinia on their heads had them attached to their 
fore-legs when examined shortly afterward. These frequently 
successful efforts on the part of the bees to free themselves 
from the pollinia explain why we often find whole pollinia or 
pairs of pollinia attached to the flowers, generally in the neigh- 
borhood of the stigma.” 
These flowers I have just described had a rank smell, and I 
do not remember that I ever found a really fragrant specimen 
of this Fringed-Orchis, though it is the only Habenaria called 
fragrant by Gray. 
In some parts of Vermont, A. psycodes bears the picturesque 
name of “Flaming Orchis,” which ought rather to be trans- 
ferred to the Yellow Fringed-Orchis, H. czlzarzs, fit symbol of 
the wealth and glow of August; resplendent in orange and 
gold, not only in sepals and petals but even in spurs and 
ovaries, and admitting but one rival, the cardinal flower, burn- 
ing its torch well into September in Northern New England. 
In Connecticut and Rhode Island, where it is local but abun- 
dant, it is not unfrequently met with in July. Near Plymouth, 
Massachusetts, as I am informed, there is a bog in which it is 
“almost a weed,” but one must go west or south to get it by 
the wholesale. There are places near New York, for instance, 
where it grows by the acre. If I had my own way, it should 
never grow in bogs among coarse pitcher plants; it needs a 
richer background; but in ferny meadows bordering a sandy 
brook, as it does in a jealously guarded spot I know of in 
Guilford, Conn.; and if I ever write a romance of Indian life, 
my dusky heroine, Birch Tree or Trembling Fawn, shall meet 
her lover with a wreath of this Orchis on her head. 
The White Fringed-Orchis, A. dlephariglottds, known as the 
Feather-leaved Orchis in some localities on Cape Cod, grows 
with HY. celzaris, and as Gray well says, “ commonly takes its 
place northward.” This species does not grow as high, has 
8 
