petals; the oblong, spreading lip crinkle-edged, and bearing minute,
hairy callosities at base. _Stem:_ 6 in. to 2 ft. tall, with several
pointed, wrapping bracts. _Leaves:_ From or near the base, linear,
almost grass-like.

_Preferred Habitat_--Low meadows, ditches, and swamps.

_Flowering Season_--July-October.

_Distribution_--Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the
Mississippi.

This last orchid of the season, and perhaps the commonest of its
interesting tribe in the eastern United States, at least, bears flowers
that, however insignificant in size, are marvellous pieces of mechanism,
to which such men as Charles Darwin and Asa Gray have devoted hours of
study and, these two men particularly, much correspondence.

Just as a woodpecker begins at the bottom of a tree and taps his way
upward, so a bee begins at the lower and older flowers on a spike and
works up to the younger ones; a fact on which this little orchid, like
many another plant that arranges its blossoms in long racemes, depends.
Let us not note for the present what happens in the older flowers, but
begin our observations, with the help of a powerful lens, when the bee
has alighted on the spreading lip of a newly opened blossom toward the
top of the spire. As nectar is already secreted for her in its
receptacle, she thrusts her tongue through the channel provided to guide
it aright, and by the slight contact with the furrowed rostellum, it
splits, and releases a boat-shaped disk standing vertically on its stern
in the passage. Within the boat is an extremely sticky cement that