CYPRIPE'DIUM HU'MILE. 
HUMBLE ladies’ SLIPPER. 
Class. 
GYNANDRIA. 
Order. 
DIANDRIA, 
Natural Order. 
orchidacea;. 
Native of 
Height. 
Flowers in 
Duration. 
Introduced 
N. America 
6 inches. 
May, June. 
Perennial. 
in 1786. 
No. 767. 
The generic name, Cypripeclium, was com- 
pounded to indicate the shoe-like shape of the 
flower. It is derived from the Greek words kupris, 
one of the names of Venus, and podion a slipper. 
These beautiful and singular plants are chiefly 
natives of North America; England, however, cl aims 
one species as her own, the Cypripedium calceolus — 
a plant not devoid of beauty, but less splendid than 
are most of those obtained from the continent of 
America. America, the English botanist can 
scarcely look upon but with envy. Her extent 
from the north ])ole to the equator, and from the 
equator far south, gives her all required climates. 
Her mountains too, rising from burning sands at 
their base to regions of perpetual snow at their sum- 
mits, furnish habitats for plants both of the torrid 
and frigid zone. A single continent, however, al- 
though it embraces every variety of climate — every 
degree of temperature afforded by the extremes of 
latitude, and the extremes of altitude, is not, we here 
see, ordained by the divine distributor of earth’s 
riches to bear spontaneously all the works of his 
hand. He has sown the seeds upon a thousand 
