Flower - Solitary, large, showy, borne at the top of a leafy stem to 2 ft. high. Sepals 3, 2 of them united, greenish or yellowish, striped with purple or dull red, very long, narrow; 2 petals, brown, narrower, twisting; the third an inflated sac, open at the top, 1 to 2 in. long, pale yellow, purple lined white hairs within; sterile stamen triangular; stigma thick. Leaves: Oval or elliptic, pointed, 3 to 5 in, long, parallel-nerved, sheathing. Preferred Habitat - Moist or boggy woods and thickets; hilly ground. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Alabama, westward to Minnesota and Nebraska.
Swinging outward from a leaf-clasped stem, this orchid attracts us by its flaunted beauty and decorative form from tip to root, not less than the aesthetic little bees for which its adornment and mechanism are so marvelously adapted. Doubtless the heavy, oily odor is an additional attraction to them. Parallel purplish lines, converging toward the circular opening of the pale yellow, inflated pouch, guide the visitor into a spacious banquet-hall (labellum) such as the pink lady's slipper (q.v.) also entertains her guests in. Fine hairs within secrete tiny drops of fluid at their tips - a secretion which hardens into a brittle crust, like a syrup's, when it dries. Darwin became especially interested in this flower through a delightful correspondence with Professor Asa Gray, who was the first to understand it, and he finally secured a specimen to experiment on.
"I first introduced some flies into the labellum through the large upper opening," Darwin wrote, "but they were either too large or too stupid, and did not crawl out properly. I then caught and placed within the labellum a very small bee which seemed of about the right size, namely Andrena parvula…. The bee vainly endeavored to crawl out again the same way it entered, but always fell backwards, owing to the margins being inflected. The labellum thus acts like one of those conical traps with the edges turned inwards, which are sold to catch beetles and cockroaches in London kitchens. It could not creep out through the slit between the folded edges of the basal part of the labellum, as the elongated, triangular, rudimentary stamen here closes the passage. Ultimately it forced its way out through one of the small orifices close to one of the anthers, and was found when caught to be smeared with the glutinous pollen. I then put the same bee into another labellum; and again it crawled out through one of the small orifices, always covered with pollen. I repeated the operation five times, always with the same result. I afterwards cut away the labellum, so as to examine the stigma, and found its whole surface covered with pollen. It should be noticed that an insect in making its escape, must first brush past the stigma and afterwards one of the anthers, so that it cannot leave pollen on the stigma, until being already smeared with pollen from one flower it enters another; and thus there will be a good chance of cross-fertilization between two distinct plants…. Thus the use of all parts of the flower, - namely, the inflected edges, or the polished inner sides of the labellum; the two orifices and their position close to the anthers and stigma, - the large size of the medial rudimentary stamen, - are rendered intelligible. An insect which enters the labellum is thus compelled to crawl out by one of the two narrow passages, on the sides of which the pollen-masses and stigma are placed."
These common orchids, which are not at all difficult to naturalize in a well-drained, shady spot in the garden, should be lifted with a good ball of earth and plenty of leaf-mould immediately after flowering. Here we can note little American Andrena bees unwittingly becoming the flower's slaves. Several species of exotic cypripediums are so common in the city florist's shops every one has an opportunity to study their marvelous structure.
The similar SMALL YELLOW LADY'S SLIPPER (C. parviflorum), a delicately fragrant orchid about half the size of its big sister, has a brighter yellow pouch, and occasionally its sepals and petals are purplish. As they usually grow in the same localities, and have the same blooming season, opportunities for comparison are not lacking. This fairer, sweeter, little orchid roams westward as far as the State of Washington.
YELLOW FRINGED ORCHIS
(Habenaria ciliaris) Orchid family
Flowers - Bright yellow or orange, borne in a showy, closely set, oblong spike, 3 to 6 in. long. The lip of each flower copiously fringed; the slender spur 1 to 1 1/2 in. long; similar to white fringed orchis (q.v.); and between the two, intermediate pale yellow hybrids may be found. Stem: Slender, leafy, 1 to 2 1/2 feet high. Leaves: Lance-shaped, clasping. Preferred Habitat - Moist meadows and sandy bogs. Flowering Season - July-August. Distribution - Vermont to Florida; Ontario to Texas.
Where this brilliant, beautiful orchid and its lovely white sister grow together in the bog - which cannot be through a very wide range, since one is common northward, where the other is rare, and vice versa - the yellow fringed orchis will be found blooming a few days later. In general structure the plants closely resemble each other. Their similar method of enforcing payment for a sip of nectar concealed in a tube so narrow and deep none but a sphinx moth or butterfly may drain it all (though large bumblebees occasionally get some too, from brimming nectaries) has been described (q.v.), to which the interested reader is referred. Both these orchids have their sticky discs projecting unusually far, as if raised on a pedicel - an arrangement which indicates that they "are to be stuck to the face or head of some nectar-sucking insect of appropriate size that visits the flowers," wrote Dr. Asa Gray over forty years ago. Various species of hawk moths, common in different parts of our area, of course have tongues of various lengths, and naturally every visitor does not receive his load of pollen on the same identical spot. At dusk, when sphinx moths begin their rounds, it will be noticed that the white and yellow flowers remain conspicuous long after blossoms of other colors have melted into the general darkness. Such flowers as cater to these moths, if they have fragrance, emit it then most strongly, as an additional attraction. Again, it will be noticed that few such flowers provide a strong projecting petal-platform for visitors to alight on; that would be superfluous, since sphinx moths suck while hovering over a tube, with their wings in exceedingly rapid motion, just like a hummingbird, for which the larger species are so often mistaken at twilight. This deep-hued orchid apparently attracts as many butterflies as sphinx moths, which show a predilection for the white species.
>From Ontario and the Mississippi eastward, and southward to the Gulf, the TUBERCLED or SMALL PALE GREEN ORCHIS (H. flava) lifts a spire of inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, more attractive to the eye of the structural botanist than to the aesthete. It blooms in moist places, as most orchids do, since water with which to manufacture nectar enough to fill their deep spurs is a prime necessity. Orchids have arrived at that pinnacle of achievement that it is impossible for them to fertilize themselves. More than that, some are absolutely sterile to their own pollen when it is applied to their stigmas artificially with insect aid, however, a single plant has produced over 1,000,700 seeds. No wonder, then, that, as a family, they have adopted the most marvelous blandishments and mechanism in the whole floral kingdom to secure the visits of that special insect to which each is adapted, and, having secured him, to compel him unwittingly to do their bidding. In the steaming tropical jungles, where vegetation is luxuriant to the point of suffocation, and where insect life swarms in mvriads undreamed of here, we can see the best of reasons for orchids mounting into trees and living on air to escape strangulation on the ground, and for donning larger and more gorgeous apparel to attract attention in the fierce competition for insect trade waged about them. Here, where the struggle for survival is incomparably easier, we have terrestrial orchids, small, and quietly clad, for the most part.
Having the gorgeous, exotic air plants of the hothouse in mind, this little tubercled orchis seems a very poor relation indeed. In June and July, about a week before the ragged orchis comes out, we may look for this small, fringeless sister. Its clasping leaves, which decrease in size as they ascend the stem (not to shut off the light and rain from the lower ones), are parallel-veined, elliptic, or, the higher ones, lance-shaped. A prominent tubercle, or palate, growing upward from the lip, almost conceals the entrance to the nectary. and makes a side approach necessary. Why? Usually an insect has free, straight access down the center of a flower's throat, but here he cannot have it. A slender tongue must be directed obliquely from above into the spur, and it will enter the discal groove as a thread enters the eye of a needle. By this arrangement the tongue must certainly come in contact with one of the sticky discs to which an elongated pollen gland is attached. The cement on the disc hardening even while the visitor sucks, the pollen gland is therefore drawn out, because firmly attached to his tongue. At first the pollen mass stands erect on the proboscis; but in the fraction of a moment which it takes a butterfly to flit to another blossom, it has bent forward automatically into the exact position required for it to come in contact with the sticky stigma of the next tubercled orchis entered, where it will be broken off. Now we understand the use of the palate. Butterfly collectors often take specimens with remnants of these pollen stumps stuck to their tongues. In his classical work "On the Fertilization of Orchids by Insects," Darwin tells of finding a mottled rustic butterfly whose proboscis was decorated with eleven pairs of pollen masses, taken from as many blossoms of the pyramidal orchis. Have these flowers no mercy on their long-suffering friends? A bee with some orchid pollen-stumps attached to its head was once sent to Mr. Frank Cheshire, the English expert who had just discovered some strange bee diseases. He was requested to name the malady that had caused so abnormal an outgrowth on the bee's forehead!