SMALL YELLOW LADYSLIPPER 



Cypripedium parviflorum Salisbury 



The flowers of the small yellow ladyslipper, their golden pouches 

 decked with streamers of bronze and claret, immediately attract us by 

 their beauty and we do not wonder that passing bees are enticed by the 

 coloring and perfume of the flowers. Inside the yellow pouch are nu- 

 merous fine hairs, which secrete tiny drops of a sticky fluid. The bee, 

 attempting to escape, after she has been smeared with this substance, 

 is forced by the shape of the pouch to crawl out by one of the narrow 

 passages, on the sides of which the pollen masses and stigma are placed. 

 In so doing the bee brushes first past the stigma and then the pollen- 

 bearing anthers. She can not leave pollen on a stigma until she has 

 been smeared with pollen from another flower, and thus cross fertili- 

 zation is effected. 



Fortunately this orchid is easily grown in a wild garden, requiring 

 only a plentiful supply of humus in the soil. 



The specimen sketched was found in North Carolina, but the plant 

 ranges from Georgia to Newfoundland and westward to Missouri, 

 Utah, and British Columbia. 



PLATE 9X 



