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Pitcher Plant. Side-Saddle Flower. Huntsman's Cup

Sarracenia purpurea. Pitcher-plant Family.

Scape.--Naked; one-flowered; about one foot high. Leaves.--Pitchershaped; broadly winged; hooded. Flower.--Red, pink, or greenish; large; nodding. Calyx.--Of five colored sepals, with three bractlets at the base. Corolla.--Of five fiddle-shaped petals which are arched over the greenish-yellow style. Stamens.--Numerous. Pistil.--One, with a short style which expands at the summit into a petal-like umbrella-shaped body, with five small hooked stigmas. The first finding of even the leaves of the pitcher-plant is not to be forgotten. For these leaves not only attract attention by their occasional rich markings, and by their odd pitcher-like shape, but they arouse curiosity by the trap which they set for unwary insects. They are partly lined with a sugary exudation, below which, for a space, they are highly polished, while still lower grow stiff, down-pointing bristles. Insects attracted by the sweet secretion soon find themselves prisoners, as they can seldom fight their way upward through the opposing bristles, or escape by a flight so perpendicular as would be necessary from the form of the cavity. It is rarely that one finds a plant whose leaves are not partially filled with water and drowned insects, and these latter are believed to contribute to its nourishment. In an entry in his journal one September, Thoreau writes of a certain swamp: "Though the moss is comparatively dry, I cannot walk without upsetting the numerous pitchers, which are now full of water, and so wetting my feet;" and continues: "I once accidentally sat down on such a bed of pitcher plants, and found an uncommonly wet seat where I expected a dry one. These leaves are of various colors, from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. Old Josselyn called this `hollow-leaved lavender.' I think we have no other plant so singular and remarkable." And November 15th he finds "the water frozen solid in the leaves of the pitcher plant." But singular and interesting though these leaves are, the greatest charm of the plant, it seems to me, lies in its beautiful and unusual flower. This flower we find, if we have the luck, during the early part of June. Although I believe its most frequent color is red (Thoreau likens it to "a great dull red rose," but Gray accuses it of being "deep purple"), I have usually found it either pink or green--fresh delicate shades of both colors--and with a fragrance suggesting sandal-wood. And though (unlike some fortunate friends) I have never found these blossoms rearing themselves by the hundred in an open swamp, baring their beauty to the sunlight, it will be long before I forget the throb of delight which followed my first sight of the plant in a shaded bog, where its delicately tinted flowers nodded almost undetected under bending ferns and masses of false hellebore.