Erect, as if conscious of its striking beauty, this vivid lily lifts a chalice that suggests a trap for catching sunbeams from fiery old Sol. Defiant of his scorching rays in its dry habitat, it neither nods nor droops even during prolonged drought; and vet many people confuse it with the gracefully pendent, swaying bells of the yellow Canada lily, which will grow in a swamp rather than forego moisture. Li, the Celtic for white, from which the family derived its name, makes this bright-hued flower blush to own it. Seedmen, who export quantities of our superb native lilies to Europe, supply bulbs so cheap that no one should wait four years for flowers from seed, or go without their splendor in our over-conventional gardens. Why this early lily is radiantly colored and speckled is told in the description of the Canada lily (q.v.).
The WESTERN RED LILY (L. umbellatum), that takes the place of the Philadelphia species from Ohio, Minnesota, and the Northwest Territory, southward to Missouri, Arkansas, and Colorado, lifts similar but smaller red, orange, or yellow flowers on a more slender stem, two feet high or less, set with narrow, linear, alternate leaves, or perhaps the upper ones in whorls. It blooms in June or July, in dry soil, preferably in open, sandy situations.
LARGE CORAL-ROOT
(Corallorhiza multiflora) Orchid family
Flowers - Dull brownish purple, about 1/2 in. high; 10 to 30 borne in a raceme 2 to 8 in. long. Petals about the length of sepals, and somewhat united at the base; spur yellowish, the oval lip white, spotted and lined with purplish; 3-lobed, wavy edged. Scape, 8 to 20 in. tall, colored, furnished with several flat scales. Leaves: None. Root: A branching, coral-like mass. Preferred Habitat - Dry woods. Flowering Season - July-September. Distribution - Nova Scotia, westward to British Columbia; south to Florida, Missouri, and California.
To the majority of people the very word orchid suggests a millionaire's hothouse, or some fashionable florist's show window, where tropical air plants send forth gorgeous blossoms, exquisite in color, marvelous in form; so that when this insignificant little stalk pokes its way through the soil at midsummer and produces some dull flowers of indefinite shades and no leaves at all to help make them attractive, one feels that the coral-root is a very poor relation of theirs indeed. The prettily marked lower lip, at once a platform and nectar guide to the insect alighting on it, is all that suggests ambition worthy of an orchid.
If poverty of men and nations can be traced to certain radical causes by the social economist, just as surely can the botanist account for loss of leaves - riches - by closely examining the poverty-stricken plant. Every phenomenon has its explanation. A glance at the extraordinary formation under ground reveals the fact that the coral-roots, although related to the most aristocratic and highly organized plants in existence, have stooped to become ghoulish saprophytes. An honest herb abounds in good green coloring matter (chlorophyll), that serves as a light screen to the cellular juices of leaf and stem. It also forms part of its digestive apparatus, aiding a plant in the manufacture of its own food out of the soil, water, and gases; whereas a plant that lives by piracy - a parasite - or a saprophyte, that sucks up the already assimilated products of another's decay, loses its useless chlorophyll as surely as if it had been kept in a cellar. In time its equally useless leaves dwindle to bracts, or disappear. Nature wastes no energy. Fungi, for example, are both parasites and saprophytes; and so when plants far higher up in the evolutionary scale than they lose leaves and green color too, we may know they are degenerates belonging to that disreputable gang of branded sinners which includes the Indian-pipe, broom-rape, dodder, pine-sap, and beech-drops. Others, like the gerardias and foxgloves, may even now be detected on the brink of a fall from grace.
The EARLY CORAL-ROOT (C. Corallorhiza; C. innata of Gray) - a similar but smaller species, whose loose spike of dull purplish flowers likewise terminates a scaly purplish or yellowish scape arising from a mass of short, thick, whitish, fleshy, blunt fibers, may be found in the moist woods blooming in May or June. It has a more northerly range, however, extending from the mountains of Georgia, it is true, but chiefly from the northern boundary of the United States, from New England westward to the State of Washington, and northward to Nova Scotia and Alaska.
ADAM AND EVE; PUTTY-ROOT
(Aplectrum spicatum; A. hyemale of Gray)) Orchid family
Flowers - Dingy yellowish brown and purplish, about 1 in. long, each on a short pedicel, in a few-flowered, loose, bracted raceme 2 to 4 in. long. No spur; sepals and petals similar, small and narrow, the lip wavy-edged. Scape: to 2 ft. high, smooth, with about 3 sheathing scales. Leaf: Solitary, rising from the corm in autumn, elliptic, broad, plaited-nerved, 4 to 6 in. long. Root: A corm usually attached to one of the preceding season. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods or swamps. Flowering Season - May-June. Distribution - Georgia, Missouri, and California northward, into British Possessions.
More curious than beautiful is this small orchid whose dingy flowers of indefinite color and without spurs interest us far less than the two corms barely hidden below ground. These singular solid bulbs, about an inch thick, are connected by a slender stalk, suggesting to the imaginative person who named the plant our first parents standing hand in hand in the Garden of Eden.