At last there would loom up through the green tangle a squat broken white pine. That was my landmark. I would push my way through a tangle of sanicle, and beyond the trunk of a slim elm catch a gleam of white in the dusk. There, all rose-red and snow-white, with parted lips, waited for me the queen flower of the woods, the _Cypripedium reginæ_, the loveliest of all our orchids. Two narrow, white, beautiful curved petals stretched out at right angles, while above them towered a white sepal, the three together making a snowy cross. Below this cross hung the lip of the flower, a milk-white hollow shell fully an inch across and an inch deep, veined with crystalline pink which deepened into purple, growing more intense in color until the veins massed in a network of vivid violet just under the curved lips kissed by many a wandering wood-bee. Inside the shell were spots of intense purple, showing through the transparent walls. The other two white sepals were joined together and hung as a single one behind the lip.
[Illustration: PINK AND WHITE LADY SLIPPERS (_Cypripedium reginæ_)]
I had first found this orchid while hunting for a veery's nest in the marsh. At that time nothing was showing except the leaves, which grow on tall, round, downy stems. They were beautifully curved at the margin, and were of a brilliant green, a little lighter on the under side than on the upper, and, at first sight, much like the leaves of the well-known marsh hellebore. That day was the beginning of a ten-year tryst which I kept every summer with this wood-queen. Then, alas, I lost her!
It came about thus. The marsh in which she hid was part of a thousand acres owned by a friend of mine, who was an enthusiastic and rival flower-hunter. Each year, when I visited my colony of these queen orchids, I sent him one with my compliments and the assurance that the flower belonged to him because it was found on his land. I accompanied these gifts with various misleading messages as to where they grew. He would hunt and hunt, but find nothing but exasperation. Finally, he bribed me, with an apple-wood corner cupboard I had long coveted, to show him the place. It was not fifty yards from the road, and when I took him to it he was overcome with emotion.