Preferred Habitat - Northern bogs and swamps.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - From North Carolina and Indiana northward to the Fur Countries.
One flower to a plant, and that one rarely maturing seed; a temptingly beautiful prize which few refrain from carrying home, to have it wither on the way pursued by that more persistent lover than Alpheus, the orchid-hunter who exports the bulbs to European collectors - little wonder this exquisite orchid is rare, and that from certain of those cranberry bogs of Eastern New England, which it formerly brightened with its vivid pink, it has now gone forever.Like Arethusa, the nymph whom Diana changed into a fountain that she might escape from the infatuated river god, Linnaeus fancied this flower a maiden in the midst of a spring bubbling from wet places where presumably none may follow her.
But the bee, our Arethusa's devoted lover, although no villain, still pursues her.He knows that moisture-loving plants secrete the most nectar.When the head of the bee enters the flower to sip, nothing happens; but as he raises his head to depart, it cannot help lifting the lid of the helmet-shaped anther and so letting fall a few soft pellets of pollen on it.Now, after he has drained the next arethusa, his pollen-laden head must rub against the long sticky stigma before it touches the helmet-like anther lid and precipitates another volley of pollen.In some such manner most of our orchids compel insects to work for them in preventing self-fertilization.
Another charming, but much smaller, orchid, that we must don our rubber boots to find where it hides in cool, peaty bogs from Canada and the Northern United States to California, and southward in the Rockies to Arizona, is the CALYPSO (Calypso bulbosa).It is a solitary little flower, standing out from the top of a jointed scape that never rises more than six inches from the solid bulb, hidden in the moss, nor boasts more than one nearly round leaf near its base.The blossom itself suggests one of the lady's slipper orchids, with its rosy purple, narrow, pointed sepals and petals clustered at the top above a large, sac-shaped, whitish lip.The latter is divided into two parts, heavily blotched with cinnamon brown, and woolly with a patch of yellow hairs near the point of the division.May - June.
CALOPOGON; GRASS PINK
(Limodorum tuberosum; Calopogon pulchellus of Gray) Orchid family Flowers - Purplish pink, 1 in.long, 3 to 15 around a long, loose spike.Sepals and petals similar, oval, acute; the lip on upper side of flower is broad at the summit, tapering into a claw, flexible as if hinged, densely bearded on its face with white, yellow, and magenta hairs (Calopogon = beautiful beard).Column below lip (ovary not twisted in this exceptional case); sticky stigma at summit of column, and just below it a 2-celled anther, each cell containing 2 pollen masses, the grain lightly connected by threads.Scape: 1 to 1 1/2 ft.high, slender, naked.Leaf:
Solitary, long, grass-like, from a round bulb arising from bulb of previous year.
Preferred Habitat - Swamps, cranberry bogs, and low meadows.
Flowering Season - June-July.
Distribution - Newfoundland to Florida, and westward to the Mississippi.
Fortunately this lovely orchid, one of the most interesting of its highly organized family, is far from rare, and where we find the rose pogonia and other bog-loving relatives growing, the calopogon usually outnumbers them all.Limodorum translated reads meadow-gift; but we find the flower less frequently in grassy places than those who have waded into its favorite haunts could wish.
Owing to the crested lip being oddly situated on the upper part of the flower, which appears to be growing upside down in consequence, one might suppose a visiting insect would not choose to alight on it.The pretty club-shaped, vari-colored hairs, which he may mistake for stamens, and which keep his feet from slipping, irresistibly invite him there, however, when, presto!
down drops the fringed lip with startling suddenness.Of course, the bee strikes his back against the column when he falls.Now, there are two slightly upturned little wings on either side of the column, which keep his body from slipping off at either side and necessitate its exit from the end where the stigma smears it with viscid matter.The pressure of the insect on this part starts the pollen masses from their pocket just below; and as the bee slides off the end of the column, the exposed, cobwebby threads to which the pollen grains are attached cling to his sticky body.The sticky substance instantly hardening, the pollen masses, which are drawn out from their pocket as he escapes, are cemented to his abdomen in the precise spot where they must strike against the stigma of the next calopogon he tumbles in;hence cross-fertilization results.What recompense does the bee get for such rough handling? None at all, so far as is known.The flower, which secretes no nectar, is doubtless one of those gay deceivers that Sprengel named "Scheinsaftblumen," only it leads its visitors to look for pollen instead of nectar, on the supposition that the club-shaped hairs on the crests are stamens.
The wonder is that the intelligent little bees (a species of Andrenidae), which chiefly are its Victims, have not yet learned to boycott it.