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Yellow Fringed Orchis. Orange Orchis

Habenaria ciliaris. Orchis Family.

Stem.--Leafy; one to two feet high. Leaves.--The lower oblong to lance-shaped; the upper passing into pointed bracts. Flowers.--Deep orange color, with a slender spur and deeply fringed lip; growing in an oblong spike. Years may pass without our meeting this the most brilliant of our orchids. Suddenly one August day we will chance upon just such a boggy meadow as we have searched in vain a hundred times, and will behold myriads of its deep orange, dome-like spires erecting themselves in radiant beauty over whole acres of land. The separate flowers, with their long spurs and deeply fringed lips, will repay a close examination. They are well calculated, massed in such brilliant clusters, to arrest the attention of whatever insects may specially affect them. Although I have watched many of these plants I have never seen an insect visit one, and am inclined to think that they are fertilized by night moths.

Mr. Baldwin declares: "If I ever write a romance of Indian life, my dusky heroine, Birch Tree or Trembling Fawn, shall meet her lover with a wreath of this orchis on her head."