Preface
During many seasons spent in the Hoosac Valley, it has been a source of great pleasure to me to trace mountain streams through moss-grown ravines to their beginnings, and to explore the almost inaccessible recesses of the sphagnous boglands. I have found it a delight to study the orchids, ferns, and various flowers sheltered in their homes, far removed from the roadside. I seldom follow any well-worn forest paths, for I have observed that the rarer plants do not dwell where the foot of man or the grazing herds have wandered. So it happens that the walks described in these pages lead mostly across lots, over hills and mountains, and through swamps.
The Hoosac Valley lies in the heart of the irregular Taconic Mountains, and extends over the southwestern part of Bennington County, Vermont, and the northwestern part of Berkshire County, Massachusetts. This region has a soil peculiarly adapted to the origin and growth of orchids. Here along the numerous streams and in the little vales are many unfathomable peat and marl beds which are veritable orchid gardens. The valley seems to be the common ground where rare plants from the North and South, as well as the migrating species from the East and West, meet and overlap each other.
Many people are accustomed to think of the orchid as a tropical flower which grows in our country only in cultivation and under highly artificial conditions. It is, however, true that many of the most attractive species of this beautiful group are endemic to most parts of the United States. There are to-day, according to conservative reports, from twenty-seven to thirty genera and from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty species of native orchids found in North America, north of Mexico. Most of these are terrestrial or earth-loving. There are eleven epiphytes, all of which are found only in the Southern States. The range of the North American orchids extends wherever sunshine and moisture prevail, nearly as far north as the Arctic Circle. Four Cypripediums grow between latitudes 54° and 64°, and from fifteen to eighteen species of the Orchid Family are natives of Alaska.
The North Atlantic region, covering northeastern United States and Canada, produces seventy-one species of Orchidaceæ; of these from forty-eight to fifty-six are reported for New England, and from forty to forty-two are found in the Hoosac Valley. Of the seventy-one North Atlantic orchids only fifteen or sixteen have not been found within Vermont. The most widely-known genus—Cypripedium, or Moccasin-Flower—is represented by thirteen species on the North American continent. This includes the single Mexican species. Six of this number have been collected in Connecticut, and five grow in the Hoosac Valley.
The excursions which I have recorded in this book were made particularly in search of orchids; but I have collected and observed all other flowers of interest which grow in the region which I have traversed, for the purpose of showing the natural environments of orchids, and introducing their near neighbors of swamp, forest, and rocky pasture-land.
G. G. N.
Williamstown, Massachusetts.