118 THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND, 
perhaps, or confounded with other species, as I have but lately 
been able to hear of a station in Connecticut. Like the other 
Spiranthes, it ranges as far south as Florida, and except with 
us, appears to be common enough. Its root is a “ solitary, 
spindle-shaped or oblong tuber ;” it loses its leaves, which sTrow 
like those of S. graczlis, in a cluster at the ground, at flowering, 
and produces “very short ”’ blossoms. 
So many weeds and wild plants have 
white spikes or tufts of flowers that I 
am not surprised when people to 
whom I have shown one of our 
Ladies’ Tresses tell me they have 
never seen it before; and then again, 
the time when the Ladies’ Tresses are 
due is not one when there is much 
exploration of the fields, unless it is by 
hunters, or “ city folks” who are more 
likely to have their eyes directed 
upward toward a white birch they 
want to mangle or _ scribble their 
Fic. 37.—Noppinc PoGonla. 
P. pendula. names on than toward the ground 
they are tramping over, but there is no good reason why the 
Rattle-snake Plantains should not be known to every one, for 
all the year round their pretty rosetted leaves ornament the 
woods. 
The genus Goodyera, to which they belong, contains some 
twenty-five species, scattered over Europe, temperate and 
tropical Asia, and North America, and forms, according to 
Darwin, “an interesting connecting link between several very 
distinct forms.” There are points of resemblance to both 
Orchis and Spiranthes, and accordingly Goodyera, in our bot- 
anies, stands between these two genera. Two of our species, 
G. pubescens and G. repens, are common to Great Britain, and in 
describing the latter, which he calls a “rare Highland 
