How many beautiful foreign flowers, commonly grown in our gardens here, might soon become naturalized Americans were we only generous enough to lift a few plants, scatter a few seeds over our fences into the fields and roadsides - to raise the bars of their prison, as it were, and let them free! Many have run away, to be sure. Once across the wide Atlantic, or wider Pacific, their passage paid (not sneaking in among the ballast like the more fortunate weeds), some are doomed to stay in prim, rigidly cultivated flower beds forever; others, only until a chance to bolt for freedom presents itself, and away they go. Lucky are they if every flower they produce is not picked before a single seed can be set. This blackberry lily of gorgeous hue originally came from China. Escaping from gardens here and there, it was first reported as a wild flower at East Rock, Connecticut; other groups of vagabonds were met marching along the roadsides on Long Island; near Suffern, New York; then farther southward and westward, until it has already attained a very respectable range. Every plant has some good device for sending its offspring away from home to found new colonies, if man would but let it alone. Better still, give the eager travelers a lift! LARGE YELLOW LADY'S SLIPPER; WHIPPOORWILL'S SHOE; YELLOW MOCCASIN FLOWER (Cypripedium hirsutum; C. pubescens of Gray) Orchid family Flower - Solitary, large, showy, borne at the top of a leafy stem to 2 ft. high. Sepals 3, 2 of them united, greenish or yellowish, striped with purple or dull red, very long, narrow; 2 petals, brown, narrower, twisting; the third an inflated sac, open at the top, 1 to 2 in. long, pale yellow, purple lined white hairs within; sterile stamen triangular; stigma thick. Leaves: Oval or elliptic, pointed, 3 to 5 in, long, parallel-nerved, sheathing. Preferred Habitat - Moist or boggy woods and thickets; hilly ground. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Alabama, westward to Minnesota and Nebraska. Swinging outward from a leaf-clasped stem, this orchid attracts us by its flaunted beauty and decorative form from tip to root, not less than the aesthetic little bees for which its adornment and mechanism are so marvelously adapted. Doubtless the heavy, oily odor is an additional attraction to them. Parallel purplish lines, converging toward the circular opening of the pale yellow, inflated pouch, guide the visitor into a spacious banquet-hall (labellum) such as the pink lady's slipper (q.v.) also entertains her guests in. Fine hairs within secrete tiny drops of fluid at their tips - a secretion which hardens into a brittle crust, like a syrup's, when it dries. Darwin became especially interested in this flower through a delightful correspondence with Professor Asa Gray, who was the first to understand it, and he finally secured a specimen to experiment on.