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Updated: May 23, 2025
Bridetown clustered in its elms far below; then the land rose again to protect the hamlet from the south; and beyond stretched the blue line of the Channel. The men sat here and smoked, while Estelle hunted for flowers and feathers. She came back to them presently with a bee orchis. "For you," she said, and gave it to Raymond. "What the dickens is it?" he asked, and she told him.
The grass in them was not plentiful, but the flowers were many; in the spring the orchis sent up its beautiful purple, and in the heat of summer the bird's-foot lotus flourished in the sunny places. Farther up, nearer the wood, the lane became hollow worn down between high banks, at first clothed with fern, and then, as the hill got steeper, with fir trees.
So with the flowers: the columbine, the shooting star, the painted cup, the puccoon, the beautiful though inodorous large white trillium, the delicate little corydalis, the star grass and the lady's slipper, all came within a week of their average time in spite of the cold, and the showy orchis was only just over into June.
At a little distance it was like a scarlet carpet flung out by the roadside. If you desire to twine the threefold chord of color, as Mr. Ruskin calls it, I know of no lovelier foil for the lobelia than the white orchis, which haunts the same marshy spots. Those long spikes of feathery and balanced blossoms are the most absolute white of anything in Nature.
The body of the bed was a riot of color. Here he set growing dainty blue-eyed-Marys and blue-eyed grass side by side. He planted harebells; violets, blue, white, and yellow; wild geranium, cardinal-flower, columbine, pink snake's mouth, buttercups, painted trilliums, and orchis.
Saloup was a decoction made from the Orchis mascula root, a common meadow plant, or else from Sassafras, and was at one time sold in the streets as a drink before the introduction of tea and coffee.
In a secluded swampy corner of the old Barkpeeling, where I find the great purple orchis in bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never to have trod, I linger long, contemplating the wonderful display of lichens and mosses that overrun both the smaller and the larger growths.
Old memories of friends and faces, old joys and hopes and loves flash and fade among the shrubs and the flowers here we found the orchis, there we gathered the gentians, under this oak the friend now sleeping spoke simply of his faith and hope in a future, sweeter summer, when budding thoughts and aspirations should blossom into fadeless beauty and highest ideals be attained.
Of the monkey orchis Mr. Claridge Druce says in his "Flora of Oxfordshire" that it has become exceedingly scarce, not so much from the depredations of collectors, but from the fondness of rabbits for it and the changes brought about by agriculture. The soldier orchis is very rare indeed; both are only found in a few woods in the Thames valley, and possibly in Kent.
She never pulled a primrose, but she knew the haunts of all the orchis tribe, and brought from them bees and butterflies innumerable, as offerings to her sister. Curious moths and glow-worms were her greatest delight; and she loved the stars, because they were like the glow-worms.
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