NATURE STUDY. 
164 
the organic food needed is taken from the deca}^ed vegeta¬ 
ble matter in the humus. Therefore the plant appears to 
be properly classed with the hemisaprophytes so far as the 
material of its subsistence is concerned. But this is not 
the whole story. The microscope shows that the cells of 
the root are penetrated by root-inhabiting fungi, the hy- 
phse of which connect curious knotted growths in the dif¬ 
ferent cells. So the plant has also to some extent the 
character of a symbiot. Whether the fungus is more than 
a parasite is not yet known with certainty ; but when a 
plant which is evidently deficient in chlorophyll, is 
known to be infested with fungi, and to thrive well 
nevertheless, it seems reasonable to suppose that the asso¬ 
ciation, whatever it may have been originally, has come 
in the course of time to be beneficial to the phanerogam 
(flowering plant) as well as to the cryptogam (spore-bear¬ 
ing plant.) 
Recent studies have shown that the apparent co-opera¬ 
tion of higher and lower plants occurs to a greater or less 
extent in most if not all terrestrial orchids. In this partic¬ 
ular case of Pogonia pendula the relation is unusually well 
evidenced. So, in defining the species in its relation to the 
five groups of organotopic plants it would seem proper to 
call it both a hemisaprophite and a partial symbiot. 
Like many other plants of the class, this exquisite little 
plant behaves very badly in drying. Hence good herbari¬ 
um specimens are almost out of the question. P A resh 
plants, if taken in their own leaf-mold before the flowers 
are fully expanded, will keep in good condition for several 
days. 
This series of papers might have been appropriately called 
“Queer Things Plants Do.” There is the parasite, which 
literally “ saps the life ’ ’ of another plant, or hugs it to 
death, or both. There is the hemiparasite, hypocritically 
pretending to get its food in a good honest way, but all 
