THE ORCHIDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 127 
By the middle of September the nights at the North have 
become sparkling and frosty. My favorite spring in the woods 
is choked with leaves; the blue-stemmed golden-rods and the 
tick-seeds begin to look a little discouraged, but it is still too 
early for dolorous poems on the death of the flowers and man’s 
mortality. If I go in to the forest there is bustle and noise 
on every side: the crows are gossiping over the scandalous 
thefts of the blackbirds; the jays are making their usual ado 
about nothing; the downy woodpeckers glide up the trees call- 
ing “poort! poort!”’ whatever that may mean; the squirrels 
are poking nuts into the ground with their noses, covering each 
one with nervous little taps of their paws, and as they know 
perfectly well I cannot find their hoards, though I go down on 
hands and knees, the beratings I get for looking on are quite 
uncalled for. Outside, the western sloping meadows are warm, 
and sprinkled with not a few daisies and dandelions; I even 
find some violets. The old orchards are full of bluebirds, come 
like professional singers to cheat us by twittering “last fare- 
wells;” and so, under the rich sky, it is no wonder that our 
most beautiful Ladies’ Tresses, Spiranthes cernua, has conde- 
scended to open her fragrant, cream-white chalices: and leaving 
out of mind S. graczlits, sometimes found in October, I like to 
think of it as ending the Orchid season; the only species that 
month can rightfully call her own. 
S. cernua is popularly called the Drooping or Nodding-flow- 
ered Ladies’ Tresses, and in the old botanies, the Nodding-flow- 
ered Neottia. It is very common in low ground, but varies so 
in height, and in the number and size of its flowers, that one 
ignorant of botanical distinctions cannot be blamed for mis- 
taking it for other species. As to time, too, though it is late 
blooming with us, I have known it to come as early as August 
20th, in Berkshire Co., Mass. Two characteristic features of 
this species are that, as Hooker expresses it, “ the lateral sepals 
cohere with the upper one and the petals for nearly their whole 
