Calypso
Calypso borealis. Orchis Family.
Leaf.--Single; thin; ovate or slightly heart-shaped; from a solid bulb. Flower.--Large; variegated pink and yellow; lip sac-shaped and inflated; woolly, hairy inside.
Gray calls this "a little bog-herb, . . . a very local and beautiful plant." I have seen the Calypso but once, and that once in the city, where it was brought to me by one who had been so fortunate as to know it in all the beauty of its home environment. But we need never regret that some of the loveliest flowers are still to be discovered for the first time. The anticipation of such discoveries only lends a keener zest to the approach of spring, the season that brings so much of delight and actual excitement to the flower-lover.
Mr. Baldwin, it seems to me, is the prophet of the Calypso. He celebrates her beauty in eloquent pages. He says it is abundant in Oregon and the Northwest, but so rare in New England that we can be well acquainted with its flora and yet never have seen it. Yet he tells us that Professor Scribner came on a place in Maine, "not a foot square, containing over fifty plants in bloom." And here is Mr. Baldwin's own description of the flower's home: "Even when her sanctuary is discovered Calypso does not always reveal herself. The ground and the fallen tree-trunks are thickly padded with moss and embroidered with trailing vines of snowberry and Linnaea; painted trilliums dot with their white stars the shadows lying under the tangled fragrant branches, the silence of the forest, disturbed only by the chirr of a squirrel or the sudden jubilance of the oven-bird, envelops you and seems the proper accompaniment of such an expedition. You follow, perhaps, a winding path made by the wild animals among the underbrush, moving slowly, and you easily overlook the dainty blossom, nestling in some soft, damp nook, and poised lightly on its stem as if ready to flutter away between your covetous fingers."
PINK AZALEA. WILD HONEYSUCKLE. PINXTER FLOWER. SWAMP PINK. Rhododendron nudiflorum. Heath Family.
A shrub from two to six feet high. Leaves.--Narrowly oblong; downy underneath; usually appearing somewhat later than the flowers. Flowers.--Pink; clustered. Calyx.--Minute. Corolla.--Funnel-shaped; with five long recurved lobes. Stamens.--Five or ten; long, protruding noticeably. Pistil.--One; long; protruding.
Our May swamps and moist woods are made rosy by masses of the pink azalea, which is often known as the wild honeysuckle, although not even a member of the Honeysuckle family. It is in the height of its beauty before the blooming of the laurel, and heralds the still lovelier pageant which is even then in rapid course of preparation.
In the last century the name of Mayflower was given to the shrub by the Swedes in the neighborhood of Philadelphia. Peter Kalm, the pupil of Linnaeus, after whom our laurel, Kalmia, is named, writes the following description of the shrub in his "Travels," which were published in English in 1771, and which explains the origin of one of its titles: "Some of the Swedes and Dutch call them Pinxter-bloom (Whitsunday-flower), as they really are in bloom about Whitsuntide; and at a distance they have some similarity to the Honeysuckle or `Lonicera.' . . . Its flowers were now open and added a new ornament to the woods. . . . They sit in a circle round the stem's extremity and have either a dark red or a lively red color; but by standing for some time the sun bleaches them, and at last they get to a whitish hue. . . . They have some smell, but I cannot say it is very pleasant. However, the beauty of the flowers entitles them to a place in every flower-garden." While our pink azalea could hardly be called "dark red" under any circumstances, it varies greatly in the color of its flowers.
The azalea is the national flower of Flanders.