Lake Umbagog
1907.
August
  The plants, as I have said, are largely of common
and familiar kinds. Of those blooming in July and August
buttercups, white weed, white pink and buffalo clover, yarrow, tansy,
dog bane, fire weed (Epilobium), prunella, meadow sweet, meadow
rue, joe pie weed, jewell weed, orange hawk weed, daisy flea bane,
St. Johnswort, everlasting, narrow-leaved gentian,
turtles head, thistles of both the large and small flowered kinds,
and golden rods and asters of various species are anyway the
most noticeable and attractive. In this cool and humid region
moisture-loving plants elsewhere confined chiefly to low ground
are often widely distributed. The tall meadow rue with is
creamy white flowers, the wide-branching jewell weed with its
orange yellow ones, and the turtle head with its curious, closed
corolla so very like in shape to the head of the reptile which has
suggested the name of the plant, grow almost everywhere along
these roadsides even on the crests of elevated knolls and ridges
and on steeply sloping, well-drained banks. The joe pie weed
and the hellebore are almost equally ubiquitous. But it is
only where the road dips down into some boggy hollow or
crosses a brook meadow that one is likely to see the stately
Canada Lily rearing its candelabra-like cluster of nodding yellow
blossoms above the surrounding vegetation or the full, rose pink
spikes of that beautiful and fragrant orchid Habeneria psycodes
half concealed among the lush grass. The white-flowered form
of the latter plant occurs commonly near Lakeside where I
have found as many as half-a-dozen specimens within the
space of as many square yards.