It was often a temptation during my search for wild strawberries, to saunter through the swampy meadows on the northern slopes of Mount Œta, where nesting bobolinks were busy about their homes. Their happy notes are the first to awaken one in the morning, and almost the last heard at twilight, about the edges of the road and the orchard, where they come in a very business-like way to search for food, crying the while, “Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link, spink, spank, spink; chee, chee, chee!”

As twilight deepens and the moon comes up from behind the grim form of the Dome, the mournful notes of a distant chorus of whippoorwills begin, echoing on until far into the early morning. The other noon I was startled to hear a baby whippoorwill practising his melancholy tale on the hillside above the house, where no doubt his mother had lost him the night before. He had “stayed out all night,” and knew no better than to sing in the daytime. I suppose his mother had not yet taught him when and how to sing, for he could only lisp now, saying “’Tis-so-still! ’Tis-so-still!” It sounded very odd at noon, although it was dark and rainy. I searched through the daisied meadow for him, and found that he was a full-sized bird,—too large to be lisping such baby notes, though not old enough to find the way to the twilight woods alone. Perhaps he was backward in his singing lessons, and his mother had punished him by leaving him to practise all day, when other birds of the night were drowsing under the shelter of old logs in the deep wood. So he sang on and on, at intervals, all the afternoon in the rain, out on the grassy hilltop.

I found a bobolink’s nest low in the swamp meadow, near where there were many busy “Roberts of Lincoln.” Their rich, energetic, gladsome song was very contagious, and brightened many an hour when I was housed, or sat on the porch, watching the storms come up in the north and west.

Mount Œta is one of the foothills of the Dome, lying just west of the Domelet. The Hoosac glides around its “dug-away” base, passing through the narrowest portion of the valley near the Massachusetts State Line. This pass is often called the “Golden Gate,” likened to the Pass of Thermopylæ, among the mountains of ancient Greece. Indeed, the warring history of this valley may be comparable with that of the plains of Marathon and the mountains of Hellas. Through the Hoosac Pass, during the French and Indian Wars, have marched the French cadets and cunning Indians, led by General Rigaud de Vaudreuil, to storm and capture Fort Massachusetts near the base of Greylock’s Brotherhood. Here they fought, sixty to one. These encounters were but forerunners of the Bennington rebellion among the Green Mountain Boys, and the conflicts at Ticonderoga, which led to one of the world’s great battles, fought among the hills and vales of Saratoga.

The summit of Mount Œta is crowned with luxuriant farms, with flowing fields of grain and grasses. Miniature hills and vales between, with little streams leading down the slopes, perfect an ideal pastoral dream. There is none of the boldness in the scene from this height, as observed from Mount Greylock, Mount Anthony, or the Majestic Dome.

Very often the highest summits, especially those of the Dome and the Greylock group, are draped with rosy-tinged clouds and lowering veils of mist at the sunrise hour. One of the rarest visions seen from our modern Mount Œta occurs about six o’clock in the morning, frequently during the months of June and July, when the whole valley of the Hoosac appears filled with a perfect sea of billowy fog, the distant blue mountain peaks rising above. With the golden lights of dawn falling upon this ocean of beauty, one can trace twenty miles of fairy-sea, as the foaming fog follows the serpentine windings of the Hoosac from its source under Greylock, ever broadening toward the plains of Hoosac Falls and the hills of Saratoga. Before ten o’clock the mist usually dissolves, or rises as the sun burns forth.

In all my wanderings, I had kept an eye out for the leaves and seed-capsules of the Ram’s-Head Moccasin-Flower (Cypripedium arietinum), and had revisited the Amidon Woods, where Lorenna found the first specimen for me, but without discovering any new plants. On Sunday, the second day of July, a friend and myself drove to Pownal Centre. We returned by the Gulf, or “Witch-Hollow” path,—a cross-town road seldom travelled, although shaded and pleasant. Here the sounds of the winds, breathing and reverberating through the narrow vales, then dying mournfully in the distance, intimidated the early settlers, who, being superstitious, attributed the sounds to the witches so prevalent in the history of New England. To-day there are no more dreadful sounds in these glens than the hoots of owls and the piping of frogs in the Chalk Pond pools.

We were nearing the pond region. Just west of the road there is a beautiful, ever-bubbling spring, known far and wide to tourists sauntering to Mann Mountain beyond. From this I wished to get a draught of delicious water for my friend, so I hitched the old horse to a tree by the roadside. Somehow this morning I lost my bearings, and entered the wrong ravine. I had supposed that I could find the spring in the dark; but I penetrated the thicket a little north of the right place, by the slab-bridge where, in rainy seasons, the water drains from the hills. Hunting around, however, to learn where the spring lay, I stumbled straight upon a little company of Ram’s-Head Lady’s Slippers. In my pleasure and excitement, I exclaimed, “Here are Ram’s-Heads!” frightening my friend so that she ran clear out of the thicket. She soon returned, however, when assured that there was no danger, and admired the rare little flock with me. There were only a dozen plants in the group, none of course in blossom; but several bore plump seed-capsules, proving that they had bloomed early in the season. I determined to return to this nook another day.

The next morning I started off cross-lots, over the hills afoot, to my sylvan shades, carrying my usual basket and kit of tools, with an added two-quart pail, which I promised to fill with raspberries. These berries were plentiful, I had observed, through the John-Fallow sheep pastures. Here I found a spring trickling from the shelving slate rocks, and this guided me through a meandering network of swamps, all the way to Cold Spring, in Witch Hollow below.

Major frisked about among the fields, and we had a happy time sliding down the dry and slippery pasture slopes. There, at the foot of the hill, we entered a deep, dark woodland,—just Major and I, who are faithful, congenial comrades. My constant hound is ever ready to follow my footsteps, and if he chances to lose me, I soon hear his yelp on my track. Dear old Major! I value you more than I tell you by these gentle strokes,—you, whose searching instincts would find me out wherever I might be, and whose keen scent of danger is my constant protection!

Everything was still in the hollow to-day, save for the croaking of the bull-frogs and the buzzing of flies and humming of bees, echoing from the pools and numerous flowers of Solomon’s Seal along the edges of the swamp. It was noon when I reached my colony of Ram’s-Heads, and I was glad to be sheltered in these cool glades this sweltering July day. I took note near what species of trees my rare Cypripediums grew, and found that they were rooted in loose leaf mould, from long decayed heaps of pine branches and tree-tops, left by the woodman when the forest was first hewn from these slopes. Here, also, stood crumbling stumps, and prostrate trunks lay at full length, decaying in the marl and peat. Among this mouldering soil was a pile of four-foot white birchwood—near some of the best plants of Ram’s-Head, three of which bore maturing seed-pods. Directly through the group, a wood-path wound around the hill from Cold Spring toward the north, worn by the small wild animals of the forest.

Just east of the plants I had found on Sunday, I discovered at least fifty more, withdrawn to themselves, in aristocratic exclusiveness. I lifted three of the oldest and largest plants, two of which bore large seed-pods, taking them up carefully and with plenty of soil, so as not to disturb the fibrous roots. The layer of leaf mould was loosely strewn, and not so deep here as I had expected to find it. Scarcely three inches beneath the surface, I came to a bright, whitish gravel. The spot was situated on a sloping hillside, which seemed to surround a hollow among the hills, where a glacial lake had formerly slept. It is called to-day “Chalk Pond,” the water being whitish at times in the streams flowing from the heart of the region. The soil was rich with unfathomable depths of peat and marl in the lake bed below. Peat is formed by decaying moss, ferns, and vegetable matter in general, while the marl, which lends a chalky appearance to the water and gravel, comes from the crumbling and decayed shells abounding in the soil. This loam seems to be valuable, and the pond bed is now well drained for the purpose of selling the substance as a fertilizer for lawns.

White birch, chestnut, pines, and nearer the pond meadow below, beautiful elms towered skyward. From this corner I searched the hillsides to the north, along the path. At the feet of some chestnut saplings, I found the Small Round-Leaved Orchis (Habenaria Hookeriana). The plant was young, and apparently had not put forth blossoms this summer. They appear in early June in this region. Leaving the plant to study another year, I sought the southern hillside, and came suddenly upon a sight which I shall not soon forget. Before me stood the Great Round-Leaved Orchis (Habenaria orbiculata), with its two huge, round, flat-lying leaves of a soft emerald green, about eight inches long by seven wide. It bore a tall, bracted spike of greenish-white flowers,—strange, fantastic shapes, trimmed with spurs and hoods and capes. This spike of flowers rose straight up from between the two round basal leaves. It was about two feet high originally, but had been broken, doubtless by the hailstorms of June. The common names of the Round-Leaved Orchises hereabout are “Shin-plaster” and “Heal-all,” since they are applied to bruised shins, and are used as plasters for weak lungs. Thoreau, in Maine Woods, gives even larger dimensions of the Great Green Orchis found by him in the vicinity of Mud Pond, Moosehead and Chamberlain Carries, Maine,—where he reported it very common in July.

I sat for some time admiring this weird plant; when finding that it had sown seed the former season, I decided to transport it to a garden of civilization, to see if it would take kindly to cultivation. Then I turned westward, following the sluggish yet sparkling stream down from Cold Spring. At times the stream was almost hidden by moss, through which it crept slowly.

This brook enters a large, open, meadow marsh,—the ancient lake bed of which I have spoken before,—the Chalk Pond hollow. Since it is now drained, it appears to be a promising soil in which to seek the Purple-Fringed Habenarias in the proper season. I found the leaves of a plant which I believe to have been that of one of the Purple-Fringed Orchises, but from its producing no flowers this season I was not able to designate it. Here, also, small ferns and luxuriant brakes were sheltered amid the low sumach bushes and willows. Wild grape-vines entwined the trunks of trees, reaching far into the tops of the high elms. One immense elm had been blown over by some northeast hurricane, which had quite recently swept through this hollow. The upturned roots of this ruined tree had apparently grown about a deeply buried fellow in the peat and marl, for they still retained the impression of the buried trunk about which they had clung. In the mud and water from which the tree had been torn, lay in its deep grave this log, bare of its outer bark, but still sound and round. It was now well water-soaked, after having been so long sealed from the air and light beneath the earth. How many centuries it had been buried there, no one can guess. The now apparently aged elm upon the surface had torn up several feet of earth as it fell. Forest after forest had thus fallen, a new one rising over it, eventually to give place to another, and itself to form a strata of mould, enriching the soil of these bogs which yield so many floral treasures.

I did not remain in this meadow long, as it proved still too damp to walk through grasses and sedges without water-tight boots. Coming out of this place at the foot of the little ravine below the colony of Ram’s-Heads, I ran upon numerous oblong, waxen, green leaves, which at first reminded me of the similar leaves of the Pink Moccasin-Flower (Cypripedium acaule). But on closer search for their seed-capsules, I found the fresh bracted processes of a spike containing several ovaries instead of one, as in the Moccasin-Flower. Evidently this plant was not a species of Cypripedium; and although the scape was broken, enough of the alternating process of twisting ovaries remained to assure me that I had found a colony of the early and Showy Orchis (Orchis spectabilis), which is one of the first species of orchids to bloom in New England. Indeed, it is said to open the orchid season as early as May 19th, and is found with the Wake-Robins and Arbutus, when the woods are otherwise bare and brown. I secured three of the finest plants.

My basket was now laden with choice species, including those of the Ram’s-Head, the Showy Orchis, and two species of Habenaria, a sister genus of Orchis spectabilis. The locality had proven a treasure-ground to me, for here were both the Great and the Small Round-Leaved Orchis (Habenaria orbiculata and Habenaria Hookeriana); while the Tall Green Orchis (Habenaria hyperborea) dwells in the deeper bogs along the stream.

The leaves of the Purple-Fringed Orchis (Habenaria grandiflora) are hidden in the borders of the open meadow. I found a few plants of that very rare orchid called Adder’s-Mouth (Achroanthes unifolia) seldom if ever before collected in this town. The plants are so small and inconspicuous that one may search long without seeing them. Two stood among the select company of Ram’s-Heads, while others grew along a damp, silent brook bed that had ceased to flow,—a ravine formed during spring freshets and melting snows.

This pigmy of the Orchid Family—with its pale and odorless flower and its unassuming habit of concealing itself in the darkest recesses of our forests and swamps—grows plentifully in its native haunts to the north.

I had searched long and closely for the last month, hoping to find the Large Purple-Fringed Orchis. Thoreau says: “It is remarkable that this, one of the fairest of all our flowers, should also be one of the rarest—for the most part not seen at all.... The village belle never sees this more delicate belle of the swamp.... A beauty reared in the shade of a convent, who has never strayed beyond the convent bell. Only the skunk or the owl, or other inhabitant of the swamp, beholds it.”[33]

The Yellow-Fringed Orchis follows later, blooming through August and September,—the blossoming season of the flaming Cardinal-Flower, whose brilliant coloring brightens the dark shades along streams in moist woods. The Yellow-Fringed Habenarias are found growing with the Pitcher Plant, and often fill the sphagnous swamps with a glowing mass of orange-flamed torches. Gray considered them among our handsomest species of Habenaria. They are abundant in swamps about New Haven, Connecticut, while the White-Fringed Orchises seek the coast-lines of Massachusetts, although also found sparingly in the highlands.

Species of Habenaria are called False Orchises, while species of Orchis are known as True Orchises. These species are members of sister genera, but all belong to the Orchid Family. There are but three True Orchises found on the continent north of Mexico, while not less than forty-four species of Habenaria are reported for the same area.

The genus of True Orchises comprises eighty species, distributed throughout the temperate zone of the world; while of Habenaria there are about five hundred species. Orchis spectabilis and Orchis rotundifolia are found in Vermont. The latter is the rarer, and limited in its range from northern New England to Greenland. The Orchis spectabilis ranges from Ontario southward to Georgia. The third species, Orchis aristata, is endemic to the wooded regions of Alaska.

Our common Showy Orchis resembles the Early Spring Orchis (Orchis mascula) of England, which Darwin never tired of praising. The high organism distinguishes species of this genus as True Orchises. The origin of this distinction lies in the complex structure of the organs of fertilization. The stigmatic lobes, or female organs, and the anther containing the pollinia or male substance in fertilizing, are enclosed in this genus in a pouch or hooded fold above and within the anterior portion of the orifice of the spur. In False Orchises, the stigma and anther are naked, and their glands are exposed. They are also known as Naked Gland Orchises. The more complex the structure, the more highly organized becomes the species. Orchis spectabilis displays a marvellous intelligence in its mechanism for inviting fertilization and cross-fertilization. The enclosure of the glands within the hooded pouch protects the pollinia from rains or improper insects.

The moth finds a resting-place on the petaled platform, while he pushes his tongue and head into the depths of the dainty spur attached to the flower anteriorly. In doing this he forces his forehead against the viscid lobes of the stigma, situated in the back, opposite to the entrance of the spur. In pushing, as he must, to reach the nectar in the twisting spur, he ruptures the interior membrane of the rostellum above the orifice containing the pollinia. Each mass of this fertilizing substance in this species contains viscid disks or handles, fastened with elastic hair-like caudicles attached to the pollinia. When the insect ruptures the cellular tissues of the anther, these disks shoot out of their sockets, and fasten firmly to his head. As he flies away, he possesses one or two pollinia, unique in their completeness. In visiting the next spike of the Showy Orchis, he repeats the insertion of his tongue and forehead in the spur of the nectary. The golden horn of pollinum thus rubs against the viscid surface of the stigma, and fertilization and cross-fertilization are brought about. The insect thus accomplishes all that Nature has designed for the future of the species, even if only a small portion of the pollinum is absorbed by the attractive surface of the stigma. One mass fastened to the head of a moth would, in this manner, fertilize several flowers.

According to Darwin, orchids with short-spurred nectaries are fertilized by bees and flies; while those with long spurs are visited by moths and butterflies with long proboscides.

The structure of various species calls for special insects to fertilize and cross-fertilize them. The failure to attract the proper agencies has led Nature slowly to change the organs of many orchids so that self-fertilization might be accomplished. In this way, “an enormous amount of extinction” must have taken place. A wide gap of obliteration intervenes between species of Orchis and Cypripedium, the former being the most highly organized and the latter the lowest, or abnormal species of the Orchid Family.

The species included under the great genus Habenaria grow more abundantly than any other on our continent. It is not unusual to find five or six species of this genus in a neighborhood such as the Bogs of Etchowog or Witch Hollow region. In the latter locality I found four species of Habenaria, two of Cypripedium, one of Achroanthes, and one of Orchis, making in all eight rare species for a very small area of swamp-land.

Soon after I reached home with my basket of roots, the front porch exhibited a long row of pots and tin cans, where stood my transplanted treasures, ultimately to be placed in the garden of a friend in New Haven.

It has always been a source of wonder that Thoreau did not find more species of the Orchid Family in the conifer swamps in the Maine woods. His journeys made in July, through pine and cedar and mud-pond regions, should have led to the discovery of more species than he mentions. He writes of but three species of Habenaria, one of Ladies’ Tresses (Gyrostachys), and one of Twayblade (Leptorchis liliifolia). To be sure, he found the Great Round-Leaved Habenaria and the two Purple-Fringed species in abundance, but there is no record of a Cypripedium in his data save as reported for Concord.

Species of Orchis and Habenaria are among the oldest orchids known in the records of ancient herbalists and naturalists. Both of our native Purple-Fringed Orchises (Habenaria grandiflora and Habenaria psycodes) are closely allied with Orchis morio, found so abundantly in the fields of England. Pliny, in the time of Christ, knew this plant as Orchis or Serapias, which Fée has identified with the Orchis morio now known in Europe. This species is more nearly related to our Small Purple-Fringed Orchis than to the larger species.

The origin of the name Orchis arose from the ancient lore of classical mythology. Orchis, a son of a rural god named Patellanus, failed to observe the rules of politeness while attending a festival of Bacchus, and offended one of the priestesses with his rude behavior. He was reported to the attendants for punishment, who in anger tore him to pieces. His father Patellanus, and his mother, that sweet nymph Acolasia, sought the co-deities’ influence, who, it is said, urged the superior gods to command a flower to rise from the earth perpetuating the name and memory of their son. Thus arose the strange untamable species of this family.

The species now known under genus Orchis and Habenaria had various common names in ancient literature. There were five kinds of Orchis which the Greeks commonly called Cynorchis; this became in Latin Testiculus canis and Testiculus morionis, and later in England, Orchis morio. Satyrion was also an ancient common English name for the species of Cynorchis known to the Greek apothecaries.

In the sixteenth century the Purple-Fringed Orchises of England were known as Satyrion Royall, Noble Satyrion, Palma Christi, and Royall Standergrasse. In fact, all species of orchids in 1578 were described under the group of plants designated as Standlewort, or Standergrasse.[34]

Shakespeare mentions them in Hamlet as “Long-Purples” and “Dead-Men’s Fingers.” Tennyson also speaks of them as Long-Purples in A Dirge. Rev. Mr. Ellacomb, in Robinson’s Garden, alludes to these orchises as “Dead-Men’s Thumbs.”

The Great Royall Satyrion of England and Germany, known to Dodoens and Lyte in 1578, was found in meadows and moist woods. The flowers were light purple, and gave forth sweet perfume. The roots were described as double, like a pair of hands, and each palm was parted into four or five small roots like fingers; one palm being withered and spongy, the other full and sound. From this peculiarity of form many of the names were undoubtedly derived. There was also another small purple species of Royall Satyrion, with a perfume like musk. The roots were like the larger purple Royall Satyrion.

The roots of Royall Satyrion were used as remedies against many diseases. “If an inch or as much as one’s thombe of this roote be pound and ministered in wine, it is good for many diseases,” writes Dr. Nicholas Nicols, according to Dodoens and Lyte in 1578.[35]

These orchises have figured in literature from time unknown, and although shy in New England, seeking the haunts of moose and bear, they delight still to grow in hearing of the cathedral bells in old England, where they are the common flowers of meadow and borders of corn-fields.

The proverb, that all things come round to him who waits, may for the orchis-hunter be paraphrased rather, “All things come round to him who tramps.” I was destined sooner or later, by lonely lake or mountain bog, to find the Purple-Fringed Orchis for which I had so long searched. Later in the season, on July 8th, I visited Notch Brook, North Adams, a stream flowing down through the northern Notch Valley. Wandering past the beautiful Cascade, I slowly explored the wooded vales among the Ragged Mountains. The afternoon was sultry; the sun pouring down upon the parched sod of the rocky pasture-land had shrivelled up the grasses, and now the bushes themselves were turning brown, and the leaves curling up on their edges. Through the trembling haze, partially due to the vile smoke of civilization, which arose from the various factories in the City, the sun appeared as a round, red ball of fire.

I had chosen a poor day for walking, but there were cool, shady retreats on the way, where I could find rest and shelter. I clambered down from the slopes of Aurora’s Hill, into the shadow of the valley’s smoke, crossing the sluggish stream of the Ashuilticook, by way of the iron bridge in Flag’s Meadows. I climbed to the swamps along the Ragged Hills leading to The Notch. Here the slopes of pasture-lands above State Street are clothed with bushes and brambles, through which rough, stony paths wind, where dwell the children of sunny Italy. Witt’s Ledge of lime and marble stone lies along this swell. These rough paths, with wooden steps leading summitward, were new to me.

Upon the brow of the hill was a small pond hidden at the head of an extensive swamp, amid willows and lush tangled grasses, where little lads were bathing. It was one of those wild mountainous pasture-lands where blackberry briars and sweet-fern run riot, and where the pepper-bushes and tall brakes shed forth an aromatic perfume under the full blaze of the summer sun. About the drier portions of the swamp were well-worn cow-paths, winding irregularly about the hummocks and boulders; and along the borders grew many familiar weeds and vines amid the swails and flags.

My boots being high and waterproof, I waded warily through the coarse lush grasses and cat-tail flags, encountering many deep pools. As I pushed forward, my heart sang in the very joy of living:

At the west end of the cow-path I came suddenly upon one tall, Purple-Fringed Orchis. This was my first good fortune in finding this beautiful species, although I have since found many. I stood long in wonderment and silent adoration before this fragrant beauty of the weird and lonely bogland, rearing its strange fringed petals high above the common swamp grasses. Searching about to the north and south, I found a colony of six more spikes, which assured me that I would be justified in taking the first plant I had found; and placing it with the utmost care in my crowded vasculum, I then proceeded mountainward.

On the very brow of the hill I wound around to the left, entering the wood-road leading to the Notch Valley. A beautiful cold spring gushes out in the heart of this wood, under the hill at the right, near the Cascade path. I freshened my flowers here, and hurried on to the famous foot-bridge over Notch Brook, plunging on down through the hemlock wood to get a hurried view of the Cascade below.

As I returned homeward over the heated fields, I found the atmosphere very exhausting; and the flowers, although protected in my botanizing can, were wilted. Measuring the broad expanse that intervened between me and the hill of Aurora’s Lake, the journey seemed interminable. The distance was finally covered, however, and both my fatigue and the fact that I was late for tea were forgotten in the ecstasy of having found that first Purple-Fringed Orchis. This spike grew, and every bud expanded, until within a few days it became beautiful indeed, giving forth its delicate fragrance, and proving itself the prize I had esteemed it, as I lifted it from the dark earth of the bogland of northern Berkshire.