My Studio Neighbors

Such, with slight modifications, is the plan evolved by the whole cypripedium tribe. Darwin mentions bees as the implied fertilizers, and doubtless many of the smaller bees do effect cross-fertilization in the smaller species. But the more ample passage in acaule would suggest the medium-sized Bombus as better adapted--as the experiment herewith pictured from my own experience many times would seem to verify, while a honey-bee introduced into the flower failed to fulfil the demonstration, emerging at the little doorway above without a sign of the cordial parting token. Occasionally I suppose a fool bumblebee is entrapped within the petal bower and fails to find the proper exit, or it may be--much less a fool--having run the gantlet once too often, decides to escape the ordeal; hence the occasional mutilated blossom already described. One of the most beautiful of our orchids, though its claims to admiration in this instance are chiefly confined to the foliage, is the common "Rattlesnake-Plantain," its prostrate rosettes of exquisitely white reticulated leaves carpeting many a nook in the shadows of the hemlocks, its dense spikes of yellowish-white blossoms signalling their welcome to the bees, and fully compensating in interest what they may lack in other attractive attributes.