Part 5

The Nodding Ladies’ Tresses (Gyrostachys cernua) 266

The Slender Ladies’ Tresses (Gyrostachys gracilis) 268

The Haunts of the Rattlesnake Plantain (Peramium) amid the Pines and Spruces of the Domelet, Pownal, Vermont 270

The Green Adder’s-Mouth (Achroanthes unifolia) 272

The Large Twayblade (Leptorchis liliifolia) 274

Northern Calypso (Calypso bulbosa) 276 From lithograph in Meehan’s Native Flowers and Ferns of the United States, 1: 1878. By permission. Colored

The Coral-Root (Corallorhiza) 280

The Grass Pink (Limodorum tuberosum) 282 A beautiful grassy-leaved orchid found in company with the dainty Rose Pogonia, and frequently with the rarer Arethusa in wild cranberry marshes. Colored

Epiphytes, or Air Plants. A Corner in the Orchid House of the Botanical Gardens of New York City* 284

FIRST SEASON

Off to the Hills of Berkshire and Bennington

It is not the walking merely, it is keeping yourself in tune for a walk, in the spiritual and bodily condition in which you can find entertainment and exhilaration in so simple and natural a pastime.—BURROUGHS, Pepacton.

All winter I had been promising myself the pleasure of watching the flowers unfold in the Bogs of Etchowog. On May 25th I reached the old farm on Mount Œta, having departed from New York on May 14th, fully equipped as a bog-trotter, with hunting-boots, rubber gloves, short skirts and vasculum.

My route was through New Haven and Hartford, across the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts. On my way I stopped for a brief visit at the home of a friend in New Haven. In her garden, I found a corner of the Taconic woodlands awakening. Here, in line and on time, stood five modest Yellow Lady’s Slippers (Cypripedium hirsutum), members of the Orchid Family; while along the same border clusters of the Showy Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium reginæ) were pushing their dewy-tipped beaks into light and sunshine. Although rather late in their blossoming, compared with the other sisters of this genus in New England, this species usually reaches its prime about June 20th.

On the east side of the garden towered an ambitious row of ferns, some twenty root clusters or more, including many rare species. Here was an especially queer little strap-like leaf, which one would scarcely call a fern unless one were a professed fern-hunter. It is the rare Walking Leaf (Camptosorus rhizophyllus), the scientific name meaning a bent heap, and the appearance of the plant indeed is suggestive of the name. The frond is from four to twelve inches long, springing from a heart-shaped base and reaching out a long, narrow runner, which readily roots at the end again, and thence takes a step onward, and so on, until three or four steps are taken, often in this way forming a beautiful carpet for the cold gray lime rocks, which it prefers in its native haunts.

The Walking Fern is shy in its habitat, seeking the most hidden crevices in ledges along our mountain sides. I have collected it in many dark ravines, as well as along dry, rocky ridges in the Hoosac Highlands. It takes kindly to cultivation for a season or two, and then dies out for want of its natural soil of limestone.

This common Cypripedium is closely allied with the Small Yellow Fragrant species—Cypripedium parviflorum—with which it grows in close comradeship, often intergrading. It is also nearly related with the European Yellow Cypripedium (Cypripedium calceolus), the first Cypripedium described by Linnæus in 1740-1753.]

A short walk toward West Rock, New Haven, showed me how far advanced the season really was. Here were crowds of children playing in fields covered with violets and bluets, and farther down in the damp meadows were long, serpentine lines of gold, where the Marsh Marigolds (Caltha palustris), known commonly as Cowslips, were already fading. On the edges of the swamp, the Marsh Buttercups of the Crowfoot Family (Ranunculaceæ), were lifting their shallow yellow cups to catch the sunshine. We wandered on through a pretty, wild bit of young woodland until we reached the border of a murmuring stream, creeping onward through the vale and meadow, touching the blossoming orchards here and there, and freshening the sweet white violets on its brink.

North Adams, Massachusetts, was to be my next station. This city is about two hundred miles from New York, among the Hoosac Highlands. I almost expected to see reluctant snowdrifts still lingering in the fence corners and shaded pine glens of this part of “Beautiful Berkshire,” and I half hoped to find a few late clusters of the Trailing Arbutus (Epigæa repens) creeping through the cold, mossy ravines.

Upon my arrival in North Adams, I looked through the bogs under the brow of Hoosac Mountain near Aurora’s Lake, and I could perceive scarcely any difference in the progress of flowers or foliage here from that of the region from which I had just departed. Dogwood, apple trees, violets, anemones and wake-robins were in blossom, while in the deeper bogland I found one lone, pale Pink Moccasin-Flower (Cypripedium acaule).

American White Hellebore, so commonly known as Indian Poke or Itch Weed (Veratrum viride), had already sent out a luxuriant growth of green leaves, which for a moment deceived me—as it had done many times before—by its resemblance to the foliage of the Showy Lady’s Slipper. The leaves of both these plants are plicate, and have ever been confused even by the earliest herbalists. Unrolling a spike of leaves one day, I found I had actually disturbed the buds of the queen of the Lady’s Slippers instead of the Hellebore, although they proved to be blasted. No doubt some warm day had started them prematurely, frost and cold rains later proving their ruin.

Here on a sheltered damp hillside, I found my first clusters of the season of the Pink Azalea (Azalea nudiflora), which is commonly known hereabout as Swamp-Apple, and which is very similar to Rhodora Canadensis. These species belong to the Heath Family, one of the largest among the flora of Hoosac Valley. The beautiful pink flowers of the Great Rhododendron, which measure from one to two inches in diameter, render it the most charming species of this group. It is cultivated extensively, but grows in its natural wild state, in this region, only along the margins of ponds near Montpelier and Wells River, in Vermont.

The American Mountain Laurel (Kalmia), which becomes so gorgeous later in the season, the Lambkill, Labrador Tea, Andromeda and the Cassandra are closely allied species of this group, common to this region. Other familiar members of it are the Trailing Arbutus, Gaultheria, and the Creeping Snowberry. They may be found in Aurora’s Swamp.

North Adams is not far from the sources of the south and north branches of the Hoosac River, in a wild and rugged portion of Berkshire. The Hoosac proper is formed at the junction of these two streams, in the vicinity of the Print Works near Marshall Street in the city, and flows on gently in a northwesterly course to join the Hudson, near Lansingburg. Mountain streams in this region are numerous, and flow musically down through deep chasms and over great marble precipices, to swell the Hoosac as it glides slowly out through the deep-cut valley.

“We Hold the Western Gateway,” is part of the inscription on the seal of the city of North Adams, which is known as the “Tunnel City.” This is practically true, for the sole gateway of the trade from the Western States passes though the flinty wall of the Hoosac Mountain, in order to reach Boston direct. The idea of opening a path for transit through the “Forbidden Mountain,” as the Indians called it, was conceived six years after the first mail-coach and four-in-hand rattled through the street of this town to Greenfield, in 1814. It was found impossible to build the projected canal from Boston to Albany. The estimated cost of building the tunnel was less than two million dollars, but when it was completed in 1875, the total financial outlay had amounted to over twenty millions. Until January 1, 1887, this tunnel was owned by the State of Massachusetts, when it was purchased by the Fitchburg Railroad. It is four and three fourths miles long, and twenty-six feet wide, permitting of double tracks. The arch is from twenty-two to twenty-six feet high, and at each portal there is a massive granite façade.

Whenever I come to the Hoosac Valley, I enter, if possible, by way of this tunnel. I seem thus to close away the outer world, and to penetrate a new realm hidden here in the seclusion of the marble highlands. This triumph of man over the power of Nature needs no further introduction here. I can never forget, however, the weary years of hardships endured by those who toiled in its construction, entombed within the heart of the mountain, subject to the dangers of quicksands, falling rocks, damp and gases, explosives, fire and starvation, before the great work was accomplished.

I enjoyed the ridges in the pastures along the foothills of the grim-faced Tunnel Mountain, and about Aurora’s Lake, which reflects like a pretty little mirror the rugged beauty of the hills. This lake is partly natural, but now dammed artificially. Every line of its terraced shores bears the scars of antiquity, which would indicate that ten thousand years ago a larger lake slept in this hollow vale which geologists have estimated at a depth of six hundred feet. Here are rich deposits of glacial drift, and northeast of Aurora’s Lake are sphagnous swamps, where I find many rare orchids and early spring blossoms. Here both the pink and yellow Moccasin-Flowers bloom in May, while in June the queen of the tribe unfolds her white-petaled purity.

This bogland is very similar to that of the Swamp of Oracles in Pownal, in District Fourteen, save for the openness of the former’s shores. Aurora’s Swamp is located in a deep flinty basin, surrounded only by low tangled bushes and open pasture-land beyond, without forests to shield the bogs from the sweep of winds.