And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
Gray.
EEP hidden in the damp recesses of the leafy woods, many a rare and precious flower of the Orchis family blooms, flourishes, and decays, unseen by human eye, unsought by human hand, until some curious, flower-loving botanist plunges amid the rank, tangled vegetation, and brings beauties to the light.
One of these beautiful Orchids, the Orchis spectabilis or Showy Orchis, is here presented in our group.
This pretty plant is not, indeed, of very rare occurrence; its locality is rich maple and beechen woods all through Canada. The colour of the flower is white, shaded, and spotted with pink or purplish lilac; the corolla is what is termed ringent or throated, the upper petals and sepals arching over the hollow lower-lipped petal. The scape is smooth and fleshy, terminating in a loosely-flowered and many-bracted spike; the bracts are dark-green, sharp-pointed, and leafy; the root a bundle of round white fibres; the leaves, two in number, are large, blunt, oblong, shining, smooth, and oily, from three to five inches long, one larger than the other. The flowering time of the species is May and June.
Our forest glades and boggy swamps hide many a rare and precious flower known but to few; among some of the most beautiful of this interesting group of plants, we might direct attention to the elegant and rare Calypso borealis, Pogonia triphoria, and Pogonia pendula. The beautiful Grass Pink, Calopogon pulchellus, with many others of the Orchidaceæ tribe, may be regarded as flower gems to be prized alike for their exquisite forms and colouring as for their scarcity.
These lovely Orchids, transplanted to the greenhouse or conservatory, would be regarded as objects of great interest, but are rarely seen and little valued by the careless passer-by, if he chances upon them in their forest haunts.