The Ragged Orchid (H. Lacera)
Of all our native orchids, at least in the northeastern United States, the Cypripedium, or Moccasin-Flower, is perhaps the general favorite, and certainly the most widely known. This is readily accounted for not only by its frequency, but by its conspicuousness. The term "moccasin-flower" is applied more or less indiscriminately to all species. The flower is also known as the ladies'-slipper, more specifically Venus's-slipper—as warranted by its generic botanical title—from a fancied resemblance in the form of the inflated lip, which is characteristic of the genus. We may readily infer that the fair goddess was not consulted at the christening.
There are six native species of the cypripedium in this Eastern region, varying in shape and in color—shades of white, yellow, crimson, and pink. The mechanism of their cross-fertilization is the same in all, with only slight modifications.
The most common of the group, the C. acaule, most widely known as the moccasin-flower, whose large, nodding, pale crimson blooms we so irresistibly associate with the cool hemlock woods, will afford a good illustration.
The lip in all the cypripediums is more or less sac-like and inflated. In the present species, C. acaule, however, we see a unique variation, this portion of the flower being conspicuously bag-like, and cleft by a fissure down its entire anterior face. In Fig. 16 is shown a front view of the blossom, showing this fissure. The "column" (B) in the cypripedium is very distinctive, and from the front view is very non-committal. It is only as we see it in side section, or from beneath, that we fully comprehend the disposition of stigma and pollen. Upon the stalk of this column there appear from the front three lobes—two small ones at the sides, each of which hides an anther attached to its under face—the large terminal third lobe being in truth a barren rudiment of a former stamen, and which now overarches the stigma. The relative position of these parts may be seen in the under view.
Cypripedium Acaule
The anthers in this genus, then, are two, instead of the previous single anther with its two pollen-cells. The pollen is also quite different in its character, being here in the form of a pasty mass, whose entire exposed surface, as the anther opens, is coated with a very viscid gluten.
