Part 13

On the hillside, up which I climbed to the west for a short distance, I found pretty leaves of grasses, delicate emerald in color, growing in a triangular form, and resembling lily leaves.

I had heard distant thunder rolling off to the northwest, and it caused me to hasten onward. My rest, therefore, at the spring was brief to-day; although so far away from home, I was not so far from shelter, and the thought of a shower was welcome, for the air was sultry. As I neared the open swamp, beyond the mill, the storm made rapid strides, but I wandered up and down the meadow long enough to assure myself that this season the Pogonias and Limodorums were not in bloom on time.

Large drops of rain began to fall from the black clouds, and as I hurried toward the shelter of the mill, I met Merwin and his mother returning to their home. They motioned me to join them. As I did so, great gusts of wind dashed over us, and suddenly huge hailstones pelted the earth. Leaves and small twigs and young apples fell on every side, while the half-grown nuts from the Butternut-tree (Juglans cinerea), in the dooryard, were soon stripped away, with the leaves and broken limbs of the tree. Some of the hailstones were the size of small hen’s-eggs, perfect, oval ices which might have been turned out of glass moulds.

Soon the air became very chilly, as during the first snow on a damp November day, while the ground was white with hailstones. This abrupt change in the atmosphere from heat to extreme cold caused untimely deaths in the chicken yard. The old mother hen lost her head completely, and unable to find shelter in the barn because of the banging doors, she put her head in a crevice while her brood ran about and perished with cold or were killed by the stones.

Merwin’s mother sadly watched the devastation of her little garden, and the death of her chickens. It was impossible to go to their rescue without danger to our own heads. This storm continued about two hours, alternating now and then with a calm, to return again and again with sudden fury. At the end of that time, although it still rained sadly, I started for home, knowing that with rubber boots I could wade, if necessary, through any ordinary streams.

The weather had turned so cold that an icy coating covered the meadow grass and the borders of the road, and promised not to melt away in haste.

As I neared Kimball Farm, where Ball Brook meets Thompson’s stream, I found the road opposite the barns flooded,—like a river flowing across the road. It was far too deep for me to wade through, besides, the current was so strong that I should have been tripped had I ventured it. I had to walk some distance on the stone wall and over a heavy plank, which some one during a previous deluge had placed here for a high-water foot-bridge in an emergency.

A walk up the hill, and I turned off the road, entering a path through the cow-pastures, to see the heaps of hail under the pines along Thompson’s Brook, which was a beautiful, roaring and seething torrent now, as it plunged and leaped down through its rocky flume to the valley below.

As I came out on the highway again, at the bend in the road near Ball Farm, I heard the familiar voice of some one who had been sent in search of me. I was warmed with enthusiasm and interest in the storm’s ravages, and thoroughly enjoying my walk. However, I was grateful for a ride home. Passing by School Fourteen, we saw the prudent teacher scanning the sky before she ventured forth. We noticed many broken panes of glass in the schoolhouse windows, while dozens were shattered in the houses along the way.

I had hoped to revisit the colony of the Showy Moccasin-Flowers which I had found in Cranberry Swamp, north of the pond on June 14th. But Merwin’s mother told me that without doubt they had been gathered on Saturday afternoon, June 19th, by three students from Williams College; she had seen two of them come around the hill by the pond about five o’clock on that day, bearing a new bushel-basket filled with these gorgeous orchids, while the third soon followed laden with more than he could easily carry far in his arms. They followed the cool mountain road over the Domelet to Williamstown, a road over which the yeomen from northern Berkshire were led to battle at Bennington, on the 16th of August, 1777. The road is seldom traversed now, and at best is rough and rocky. It leads directly from Bennington southward to North Adams, under the mountains, and indirectly to Boston.

Had the storm come on Saturday, instead of Monday, very few blossoms of these orchids would have decorated the church chancel on Baccalaureate Sunday for Williams’ Commencement exercises.

The fact that these students come to the Pownal bogs for these orchids assured me of the scarcity and rarity of the species in Williamstown, although they may be found sparingly in the swamps of The Forks along Broad Brook, just over the Vermont State Line in Pownal. This stream rises on the east side of the Majestic Dome, and flows down to the Hoosac by way of White Oaks, and thus enters Williamstown, where it soon joins the river. The orchids in The Forks are quickly plundered, long before June 20th, by ignorant tourists or students afield botanizing, who either do not realize or do not care that plucking all these rare blossoms will in time bring about their total extinction.

Orchids may in many instances produce seeds in abundance, but why they do not reproduce more seedlings is a problem not easily solved nor remedied.

Darwin once estimated that a single spike of the English Orchis (Orchis masculata) produced over 186,000 seeds, and that at this rate its grandchildren would soon carpet the earth; while Müller says also that his brother estimated 1,750,000 seeds in a single capsule of another species of the family (Maxillaria). We must remember that the species of Orchidacea are not as a rule self-fertilized, as are the more abundant and common flowers and weeds, which often cover acres of swampy land and fields of waste land. Our native orchids are wholly dependent upon insects for fertilization and cross-fertilization; yet, for some cause or other, comparatively few of the ripened and fertile seeds germinate and reproduce new seedlings. Our Moccasin-Flowers do not appear to multiply in many swamps, while species of Orchis and Habenaria are never abundant in this region.

For years now, I have noticed large groups of the Showy Lady’s Slippers growing in Rattlesnake Swamp near Lloyd Spring, and I can find little increase in the number of plants, or the size of the old snarl of roots. In fact, they seem to be diminishing in numbers.

There is an old colony in this region that has stood for about seventy-five years, much the same in size, on the authority of the old inhabitants of this neighborhood. It stands to-day among the shrub-like willows and swamp maples, at the feet of little scrub pines and dwarf double spruces, hidden from the sight of travellers in the path by a prostrate tree trunk and decaying primeval pine stump. I observed this colony years ago, and this season it appeared the same to me, occupying a space about two feet square. I counted forty-two full-grown flowers, many stems bearing two blossoms. This indeed was one of the most charming sights, suggesting the luxuriance of the humid climate of the tropics. It was even more enchanting than the colony of Pink Moccasin-Flowers,—that famous group of two hundred buds which the children in District Fourteen secured ahead of me, since this group of flowers were massed more closely together. I wished a sight of the Pink Moccasin-Flowers at their best. I left these, too, undisturbed save by the little moths and mosquitoes and honeybees, which came to drink the nectar within the pearly pink and white cups.

Notwithstanding the recent hailstorms, which had split many cups and spilt the dew, the flowers were developing plump, hard seed-capsules. Thousands of fertile seeds must fall and fly about from this colony; and yet the aged snarl of roots remains the same.

A unique row of seedlings of this species (Cypripedium reginæ) too young to blossom, and reminding one of a row of barn-swallows, not yet sufficiently matured to fly, grew along a moss-covered pine log, near the parent colony of plants. Digging down, I found the old log about twelve inches below the surface. It was sound at the heart, bare of its outer bark, and had become so imbedded in the water-soaked peat as to be absolutely preserved. The stump from which this tree had fallen was worn and crumbled away to the very earth, and capped with moss. It will require years for this log to settle into the peat deeply enough to allow these seedling orchids to ply and mass their roots in generous soft soil. Unless their roots deeply penetrate rich soil, the plants become pale in color and dwarfed, like the plants growing in loose sphagnum.

“Rushes tilting their burnished spears, These are her courtly cavaliers. Heart of my heart, we forswear the rose, We have been where the lady slipper grows.”

CLINTON SCOLLARD, In the Heart of June.]

I missed some old colonies; these were of a new generation, and if they are not starved out, will blossom here in a row another year.

Another cluster of plants growing near by produces the deepest magenta blossoms that I ever beheld, and only in this one group have I seen this particular hue. A deep rose-purple extends over almost the whole labellum, and from a distance I thought I had discovered the long-sought Purple-Fringed Orchis,—such a flame of color rose before me. It almost seemed a variety of the true Cypripedium reginæ.

This swamp produced just one hundred blossoms this season. Of this number I gathered about twenty-five among the scattered plants, leaving the older groups to ripen their seeds, if possible.

I found the first fully unfolded Showy Lady’s Slippers of the season, on June 8th, in the Swamp of Oracles in District Fourteen; while those of Rattlesnake Swamp unfolded fully this season on June 20th, and faded about July 1st, the season being shortened by the heavy hailstorms.

I have noticed that orchids growing in open, sunny swamps are stocky and short-scaped, bearing highly colored blossoms; while in shaded, muddy glooms the plants are rank and tender, with pale flowers, which do not last nearly so long as those which grow in the sunlight. The deeply colored specimens mentioned above grew wholly in the sunshine, and beside a fresh flowing stream.

I have transplanted all the New England species of Cypripedium, but only two of them took kindly to the garden for a succession of seasons. The small yellow species, Cypripedium parviflorum, seems easily naturalized in our damp woodland corners of the garden. The large yellow species, Cypripedium hirsutum, closely allied with the small yellow species, is easily managed in the same colony. The Ram’s-Head (Cypripedium arietinum) is more choice in its home, being rarely seen in cultivation. It is not very plentiful even in its native haunts.

I have sent plants of the Showy Lady’s Slipper and the Large Yellow Lady’s Slipper found on Mount Œta, to New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Herkimer, New York, and to New Haven, Connecticut. In every instance they have become happy in their new surroundings, thriving and blooming through several seasons. The Small Yellow Cypripedium in New Haven has flourished and bloomed for ten seasons. The seed-capsules of these orchids, however, have never matured fertile seeds in this garden; and the pods wither up and do not develop as in the forest bogs, for want of the proper insects to fertilize them. It would be well to secure pollen from sister species of this plant in the Swamp of Oracles, and insure fertilization and cross-fertilization of this tame garden plant. We might look for possible hybrids, since this species is well broken away, by ten years of cultivation, from its primeval condition.

The Showy Lady’s Slipper does not take so naturally to the garden, and in many instances does not live so long in captivity as would be expected. It will, however, produce seedlings readily, if care is taken to protect the surrounding soil in winter, where the seed is sown.