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Adder's Mouth

Pogonia ophioglossoides. Orchis Family.

Stem.--Six to nine inches high; from a fibrous root. Leaves.--An oval or lance-oblong one near the middle of the stem, and a smaller or bract-like one near the terminal flower, occasionally one or two others, with a flower in their axils. Flower.--Pale pink, sometimes white; sweet-scented; one inch long; lip bearded and fringed.

Mr. Baldwin maintains that there is no wild flower of as pure a pink as this unless it be the Sabbatia. Its color has also been described as a "peach-blossom red." As already mentioned, the plant is found blossoming in bogs during the early summer in company with the Calopogons and sundews. Its violet-like fragrance greatly enhances its charm.

The botanists have great difficulty at times in describing the colors of certain flowers, and when the blossoms look to one eye pink, to another purple, they compromise and give the color as "pink-purple." It has been no easy matter to settle satisfactorily the positions in this book of many of the flowers, more especially as the individuals vary constantly in depth of color, and even in actual color.

July 7, 1852, Thoreau devotes a page in his journal to some of these doubtful-colored flowers, whose heathenish titles excite his ire. "Pogonias are still abundant in the meadows, but are thusas I have not lately seen. . . . The very handsome `pink-purple'(As the Calopogon and Pogonia seem to me far more pink than purple, they are placed in the Pink Section. The Arethusa and the purple-fringed orchis will be found in the Purple Section.) flowers of the Calopogon pulchellus enrich the grass all around the edge of Hubbard's blueberry swamp, and are now in their prime. The Arethusa bulbosa, `crystalline purple,' Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed (tongued) are-thusa, `pale purple,' and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, `pink-purple,' make one family in my mind (next to the purple orchis, or with it), being flowers par excellence, all flowers, naked flowers, and difficult, at least the calopogon, to preserve. But they are flowers, excepting the first, at least, without a name. Pogonia! Calopogon! They would blush still deeper if they knew the names man has given them. . . . The pogonia has a strong snaky odor. The first may perhaps retain its name, are-thusa, from the places in which it grows, and the other two deserve the names of nymphs, perhaps of the class called Naiades. . . . To be sure, in a perfect flower there will be proportion between the flowers and leaves, but these are fair and delicate, nymph-like."

Calopogon pulchellus. Orchis Family.

Scape.--Rising about one foot from a small solid bulb. Leaf.--Linear; grass-like. Flowers.--Two to six on each scape; purple-pink; about one inch broad; the lip as if hinged at its insertion, bearded toward the summit with white, yellow, and purple hairs. The peculiarity of this orchid is that the ovary is not twisted, and consequently the lip is on the upper instead of the lower side of the flower.

In the bogs of early summer, side by side with the glistening sundew, and the delicate adder's mouth, one finds these lovely flowers. I remember well the first time I ever saw the Calopogon at home (for previously specimens had been sent to me). It was one morning late in June, while taking a walk with a friend and her little girl. We had just crossed a wet meadow, bright with the fronds of the Osmunda, the rank foliage of the false hellebore, and the canary-yellow of the day-blooming evening primrose. As we reached the comparatively firm ground which skirted the woods, our eyes fell upon a patch of feathery grasses and radiant Calopogons. Knowing only too well the childish instinct immediately to rush upon such a mass of floral loveliness, my first thought was to shield with outstretched arms the delicate beauties, hesitating to pick even a single blossom until we had feasted our eyes, for a time at least, upon their unruffled grace. After all, how much better than to bear away a burden of blossoms, which nearly always seem to leave half their beauty behind them, is to retain a memory of some enchanted spot unrifled of its charm. Then, too, the prevalent lack of sense of self-restraint in the picking and uprooting of flowers and ferns is resulting in the extermination of many valuable species. This is especially true in the case of the orchids. It is devoutly to be wished that every true lover of our woods and fields should set his face sternly against the ruthless habit, regardless of the pleas that may be offered in excuse.

This picking and uprooting tendency does not begin to threaten as seriously the future of our really common flowers (some of which, by the way, are so unprincipled themselves as almost to deserve extermination) as it does that of our rarer and more beautiful species. Many of these will disappear from the country, it is to be feared, if some counter-influence is not exerted, and if it is not remembered that in the case of annuals and biennials as much injury may be done to a species by the picking of the seed-yielding flower as by the uprooting of the plant itself.