Whether the season is premature or backward, the Moccasin-Flowers always appear at the same date, along with the Painted and Crimson Trilliums, in the warm Glen of Comus. I am sure of finding these flowers unfolding, the week previous to Decoration Day, from the 20th to the 28th of May.

On the 30th of May, four days after I had discovered the famous two hundred Pink Moccasin buds on the hillside above the Glen of Comus, I imagined now that they must be in full array, wearing the rich hues of magenta and all the delicate tints of green, white, and pink. When once fully unfolded they change color very rapidly. Late in the afternoon I entered the edge of the Swamp of Oracles in District Fourteen, north of the schoolhouse. My hound was my sole companion, and I heard him in the distance making friends with children, whose voices came echoing from the direction of my fairy-land of Moccasins. A foreboding that all its beauty had been plundered took possession of me, for I knew that children are instinctively selfish about flowers, and pluck every blossom they see, even though they may throw them away afterward.

I picked my way carefully through the deeper swamp, around in the opposite direction, avoiding thus the children whom I heard approaching by way of the path, their arms laden, no doubt, with the blossoms I sought a sight of. Later my worst surmise was confirmed. Not one Moccasin hung on its stem to tell the tale of the invasion. Here and there were strewn bruised leaves and stemless blossoms, prostrate on the hillside. I was sorely disappointed, and I exclaimed aloud to the echoing wood that it was a sin,—this stealing all the flowers and leaving none to mature and develop their seed pods for the continuance of the species to be enjoyed by future generations. “And if I ever get hold of these youngsters,” I cried, “I’ll tell them why!”

The “youngsters” happened to be cousins of mine who had caught the orchid mania from me, and what to them had always appeared ordinary Indian Moccasins, or Lady’s Slippers, had now an added value and charm, since they were understood to belong to the Orchid Family. The very hint that I valued them caused strife among these children, eager to show me how many they also could gather in a day. As such treasures, they gathered them, hurrying homeward to tell me how many rare and beautiful orchids they had found. They wondered if I had been near the jungle, as they saw Major, my hound, during the afternoon. I admired their blossoms, now drooping and wilted and sadly bruised, but I never told them just where I had been, nor what I had missed. I had not the actual courage to scold them, since I had set the example for them, but although I find many flowers, I gather at random for mere pleasure very few. Indeed, there is no pleasure in making desolate these choice and hidden retreats of Nature.

There are laws protecting the deer in the Green Mountains and the brook trout in their spawning season, but as yet there is no legal or moral protection to shield the flowering and fruiting season of rare flowers, especially orchids, so scarce in northern New England. Some of our orchids are already so rare, that in localities where, only a few years ago, I found them abundant, to-day hardly a trace of them remains. They have suffered from school children and commerce alike. People seek them selfishly for pleasure and study, while the drug trade demands many roots, and places fair value upon them as an inducement to collectors. These roots are used for infusions, tinctures, and ointments,—a primitive Indian custom and one which, if continued on the present scale, must in time necessarily cease, through extinction of the rarer and most showy species of our native orchids.

The country folk know the Lady’s Slippers of genus Cypripedium as the Nervine Family, valuing them as a nerve tonic. I have met a man who makes a business of following trout streams, fishing and hunting through the swamps, searching for frogs, and rare roots and herbs in their season. He finds ready market for Ginseng, American Ipecacuanha, Hellebore, or Indian Poke, from which is obtained a powerful cardiac depressent,—Veratrum viride, and species of Cypripedium also produce our native drug American valerian, which takes the place of the European drug, procured from Valerian officinalis. Snakeroot, Dogwood, and various other plants afford excellent tonics. One can readily understand, as Thomas Wentworth Higginson remarks, “that many of our rarest flowers (in the vicinity of Boston) are being chased into the very recesses of the Green and White Mountains. The relics of the Indian tribes are supported by the Legislature at Martha’s Vineyard, while these precursors of the Indians are dying unfriended away.”[12]

Where years ago the swamps were fairly rose-purple with waving blossoms of the Grass Pink (Limodorum tuberosum) and Rose Pogonia or Snake-Mouth (Pogonia ophioglossoides), this year I found so few that I could readily count them. I discovered the possible secret of this extinction in the fact that a native of Etchowog was offered by some florist or gardener fifty cents a bulb or plant for all the specimens he could secure. This was an inducement for the vandal, but Nature cannot restore her species as fast as man can uproot them and devastate their haunts. Whether this is the true cause of extinction of these species in Pownal swamps I cannot ascertain beyond this inference; however, I am convinced that a small fortune has disappeared, estimated on the lost plants at fifty cents each.

Nearly all of the public schools are instructing the children in drawing,—teaching them to study the wild flowers as they find each in its season. Educators in all nature study urge the children to bring fresh specimens, and thus unconsciously encourage the extinction of the rare species of plant life in general. The children of each district school thus hunting over a limited area, soon, with childish strife, collect all the first and fairest flowers in their path. By the close study necessary, however, for the child to produce a drawing of the flower and its structural parts, a valuable lesson may in time be learned.

The story of fertilization, the necessity of the flower’s producing seeds in order to continue its successive generations, will not be forgotten by the true nature student. But if the teacher were able to designate the rarer plants of her district, and teach her children the fatal results of continually gathering their flowers, she might awaken in the minds of the young people a higher reverence for the blossoms themselves, and scruples against depriving generations of children to come of their beauty.

There is hardly a child in the first grade in our schools who cannot tell the story of the bee and the Moccasin-Flower, and why the wonderful lines and dots of pink and gold are inside the downy shoe, instead of making the outside the more showy.

The first Moccasin-Flower which I found in Aurora’s Bog in North Adams I gave to Ray, a little lad of my acquaintance, and he happily and proudly carried it to his teacher. When he came home, he could tell me that all these inner decorations of pink and gold were dewy-tipped with sweets, and were called “Honey Guides,” just to invite bees within. And that although Master Bee goes through the front door of the Moccasin cottage, he somehow finds it locked when he wishes to escape, so in his excitement has to squeeze through the small back door next to the pollen-masses. He carries forth some of the pollen, and thus helps to fertilize the next blossom of this species, as he enters and rubs off the grains of pollen on the adhesive lobes of the viscid stigma. Insects thus are not permitted to rob the flowers of nectar and pollen without making a return for the food which the flower yields them.

Were it not for the bees and moths and various flies, the seeds of orchids would not mature, for it is a generally accepted fact that nearly all species of this family, wherever found growing, depend upon insect aid for fertilization and cross-fertilization. With the exception of one or two North American species of genus Habenaria, all other native species are aided by insects. These two species, Habenaria hyperborea and Habenaria clavellata, were, according to both Gray and Darwin, supposed regularly to fertilize themselves without aid of insects.

As the spikes of the Tall Green Orchis (Habenaria hyperborea) are frequent in the Pownal swamps, in company with the Showy Lady’s Slipper, I became interested in this plant, so independent of Master Bee or Moth.

Professor Asa Gray, in various papers on fertilization of our native orchids, has said that they were all arranged for fertilization by the aid of insects, and that very few were capable of unaided self-fertilization. He tested several species, and proved that it might occur by accident, but in general his two self-fertilized species of Habenaria were still an unsolved problem, as later developments have proven in the case of his supposed self-fertilized species, Habenaria hyperborea, which he asserted “habitually fertilized itself.” At least this species, although it may be fully equipped for self-fertilization, has been reported quite recently to be visited and fertilized by mosquitoes, proving that not in all instances is it found “habitually fertilizing” itself.[13]

In August, 1899, Professor C. A. Crandall, of the Agricultural College of Colorado, with a party of tourists camped on Medicine Bow Range, in that State, at an altitude of 10,200 feet, and observed abnormally developed mosquitoes bearing pollen-grains, which resembled those of Habenaria hyperborea; and so they proved to be, by subsequent experiments with specimens of this orchis gathered from a bog near by their camp.[14]

Another species of this genus, which is almost identical with the Tall Green Habenaria just mentioned, differs from it by bearing fragrant white flowers not adjusted for self-fertilization. This beautiful plant, Habenaria dilatata, grows sparingly in the choice haunts of the deeper Bogs of Etchowog, seeking frequently the pools near cold springs, and attracting numerous flies and moths by its rich perfumes, which one scents long before he discovers the flowers themselves.

Darwin mentions ten self-fertilized species of orchids for the whole world, and adds to that list ten more which were partially so, in case the proper insects failed to visit these plants in season.

He again asserts: “In my examination of orchids, hardly any fact has struck me so much as the endless diversities of the structure,—the prodigality of resources,—for gaining the very same end, namely, the fertilization of one flower by pollen from another plant. This fact is to a large extent intelligible on the principle of natural selection.”[15]

Of the self-fertile species, Darwin remarks: “It deserves especial attention that the flowers of all self-fertile species still retain various structures which, it is impossible to doubt, are not adapted for insuring cross-fertilization, though they are now rarely or never brought into play. We may therefore conclude that all these plants are descended from species or varieties which were formerly fertilized by insect aid.”[16]

Darwin believed that, “bearing also in mind the larger number of species in many parts of the world which from this same cause are seldom impregnated, we are led to believe that the self-fertilized plants formerly depended on the visits of insects for their fertilization, and that, from such visits failing, they did not yield a sufficiency of seed and were verging towards extinction. Under these circumstances, it is probable that they were gradually modified, so as to become more or less completely self-fertile; for it would manifestly be more advantageous to a plant to produce self-fertilized seeds rather than none at all or extremely few seeds.”[17]

Darwin questions: “Whether any species which is now never cross-fertilized will be able to resist the evil effects of long-continued self-fertilization, so as to survive for as long an average period as the other species of the same genera which are habitually cross-fertilized, cannot of course be told.... It is indeed possible that these self-fertile species may revert in the course of time to what was undoubtedly their pristine condition, and in this case their various adaptations for cross-fertilization would be again brought into action.”[18]

Indeed, the more this great scientist studied these strange flowers, the more he became impressed, and “with ever-increasing force, that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations slowly acquired through each part occasionally varying in a slight degree but in many ways, with the preservation of those variations which were beneficial to the organism under complex and ever-varying conditions of life, transcend in an incomparable manner the contrivances and adaptations which the most fertile imagination of man could invent.”[19]

The extinction of species of orchids is due to causes inharmonious with Nature, therefore, more than to the failure of the insects in fertilization and cross-fertilization. Man and his bush-whack and bog-hoe are doing more toward the extinction of our rarer species of all plant-life in their continental range than any other natural element, in the swampy, mountainous districts of the East, as well as in the open swells on the prairies of the West.

The late Grant Allen expressed regret that the native Yellow Lady’s Slipper of England, Cypripedium calceolus, “lingers in but two places,” one of those stations being on “a single estate in Durham, where it is as carefully preserved by its owner as if it were pheasants or fallow-deer.”

The wind, rains, and flowing streams, the birds, as well as migration and immigration of the nations over the world, are ever unconscious bearers of the seeds of our rare flowers and common dooryard weeds; yet for the rarer species Nature is indebted to the insects for the important process of cross-fertilization.

In country towns of New England, where summer resorts for tourists are numerous, one finds youthful venders selling the roots of the Orchid Family to “lovers of flowers,” and thus even the lovers of Nature aid in the extinction of the treasures and wealth of her soil.

Species of Cypripedium are indeed the most gorgeous among our native orchids, and will be among the first of the family to become extinct, since they do not reproduce seedlings abundantly, even in their most choice haunts.