The lady's slipper belongs to the genus Cypripedium (from two Greek words meaning Venus and a buskin, that is, Venus' slipper).
There are about forty species found in both temperate and tropical countries. The one used for our illustration is the "showy lady's slipper" (Cypripedium reginæ or spectabile) and is a native of eastern North America from Canada nearly to the Gulf of Mexico. It grows to a height of from one to three feet, and is leafy to the top. It grows in swamps and wet woods, and in many localities where it is extensively gathered for ornamental purposes it is being rapidly exterminated.
Those living before the era of modern investigation knew little of the functions of the various parts of flowers. We find an excellent illustration of this ignorance in the following peculiar account of a South American lady's slipper, written by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, father of Dr. Charles Darwin, in the latter part of the last century.
In his notes on his poem, "The Economy of Vegetation," he says: "It has a large globular nectary * * * of a fleshy color, and an incision or depression much resembling the body of the large American spider * * * attached to divergent slender petals not unlike the legs of the same spider." He says that Linnæus claims this spider catches small birds as well as insects, and adds: "The similitude of this flower to this great spider seems to be a vegetable contrivance to prevent the humming-bird from plundering its honey."
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| A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO. 281 | LADY'S SLIPPER. | COPYRIGHT 1899, BY NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO. |
JIM AND I.
BY ELANORA KINSLEY MARBLE.