Leafless plants, with coral-like roots. Scapes.—Flesh-colored; six to twenty-four inches high, with two to four scarious, sheathing bracts. Flowers.—Few to many; sessile. Perianth.—Of six segments. The five upper yellowish, striped with purple. The lip yellowish, tipped with deep red-purple. Anther.—One; resting upon the column like a lid; falling early. Ovary.—One-celled. Hab.—Central and northern Coast Ranges and Sierras.
The coral-root is very rare in some localities, and one may not meet it more than a few times. But there are favored spots where its flesh-colored stems rear themselves luxuriantly. One year I saw a magnificent bunch of them in the hands of some friends who were taking them to San Francisco to furnish a rare and costly decoration for some festive occasion. Some of the stems were two feet tall and thickly covered above with the odd flowers, making a cluster which it would be difficult to equal for quiet elegance of coloring.
The plants are often found in redwood groves or upon wooded hill-slopes of north exposure, where the dull stems and flowers blend so nicely into the dead needles and leaves upon the ground that it is difficult to detect their presence.
As its name indicates, the root is the counterpart of a spray of branching coral.
Another species—C. multiflora, Nutt.—has stems of a colder purple; and the lip of the flower is white, spotted with purple, somewhat fan-shaped and three-lobed.
[CORAL-ROOT—Corallorhiza Bigelovii.]
![[CORAL-ROOT—Corallorhiza Bigelovii.]](#3624944100741987669_f102.png.id-995963998479765354.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}