Orchids

or'kidz, a remarkable family of perennial herbs, shrubs, and climbers. The distinguishing feature of the family is the flower, which goes to the extreme of irregularity, culminating in a fleshy stigma and stamen so arranged that an insect as a bee, exploring for honey, carries away a sticky pollen mass from the stamen on its shoulders and rubs it on the stigma of the next flower visited. Our native orchids include the arethusa, calopogon, and pogonia, the choicest treasures of our bogs. The orchis, the rein-orchis, and the incomparable lady's slippers belong here. The long, twisted spikes of fragrant, waxy lady's tresses, the humble twayblade, the homely coral root, and the charmingly threatening adder's mouth all belong to this family.

Of hothouse orchids there is no end. The basket-climbing orchids of a large conservatory or plant garden, such as may be seen in Garfield and in Lincoln Park, Chicago; in Shaw's Gardens, St. Louis; in Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, and most of our large cities, are tropical marvels of color and fragrance.

In tropical countries the orchids grow from the bark of trees or from rocks. Their roots merely hold the plant in position with out reference to nourishment from the soil. Tropical orchids, therefore, are air plants. In temperate regions the orchids are herbs, or even shrubs, growing in the ground. There are about 5,000 species in all. Members of the family are distributed all over the habitable globe, but the house plants come chiefly from three regions--tropical America, India to Australia, and southern Africa.

Orchids are very capricious as to the place where they grow. One species, known as the "Flower of the Gods," is found only on Table Mountain on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. It grows nowhere else on earth. It is confined to a half mile circle on that flat-topped mountain itself. Another orchis is found only on the stone cliffs of Farther India. Some of the orchids seem exceedingly freakish in shape. One imitates the elephant moth. To the passer by, the flower looks like a moth hovering in the jungle. The butterfly orchid represents a butterfly faithfully, even to the detail of having antennae. Another orchid has a ludicrous resemblance to a black-breasted penguin sitting on its tail. At Panama the early Spaniards found an orchid which they held in reverence because it suggested to them the Holy Dove descending on Christ's head at His baptism in the Jordan. As a family the orchids are fragrant. Some have a heavy odor; the perfume of others is as delicate as that of a violet. The seed pods of an orchid contain millions upon millions of brown seeds, so fine that they are carried before the breath like the lightest dust. It seems impossible that gorgeous plants should spring from so minute and insignificant a source.

See Arethusa; Lady'S Slipper