The following essay is an old one, originally published in Yankee, Vol. 55, no. 5, May, 1991, pp. 68-70. I’m still fond of it.
Calypso bulbosa
Every year in my English classes I teach the Odyssey, and thus every year I read again of Calypso, the beautiful nymph who lived in her island cavern and loved her human castaway, Odysseus. Grapes grew around her cave. Calypso, from the Greek word meaning “she who conceals,” did not wish to let her lover leave her, though he wept for home. Shy, retiring, lovely, she sang to Odysseus to keep him from growing old, which is why her name belongs to the lilting music of the West Indies.
Calypso is also a wild orchid, Calypso bulbosa, sometimes known as Fairy Slipper. It grows in heavily wooded cedar swamps in cool climates, like those of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont – everywhere, in fact, north in the northern hemisphere. Yet it is not common; botanists describe it as “local,” which means it can be found in spots within its range, but not in wide bands. It is rare and finicky.
In this it is not much different from many other wild orchids. People are often surprised to learn that nearly 60 species of orchids grow wild in northeastern North America. Most of these are uncommon with highly specialized growing habits. Some require a sphagnum bog or extremely limy soil. Even the widespread pink moccasin flower can rarely be successfully transplanted because the roots have a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhiza, a microscopic organism in the soil. To disturb this will destroy the plant.
The common names of these creatures shimmer with a wonderful ambivalence. Some reflect a clearly feminine beauty: Calypso and Fairy Slipper, of course, and Arethusa (another goddess) and Ladies’-tresses and Lady’s-slippers. Others suggest reptiles and amphibians: Dragon’s-mouth, Adder’s-mouth, Snakemouth, Rattlesnake Plantain, and Frog Orchid. There’s beauty here, and, as Georgia O’Keeffe is forever reminding us in her paintings of flowers, something akin to terror, too.
What defines an orchid? The Greeks named the family with their word orkhis, testicle, because some of them possess a round corm, or root. Botanists consider several other technical criteria in their definition of Orchidaceae, but for most of us it’s the blossom we recognize. Every orchid has three outer floral structures, called sepals, and three inner ones, called petals. Two of these petals are similar, but the third, technically the uppermost but often twisting to become the lowest, is enlarged into a lip. With lady’s-slippers this lip forms a pouch, and with other genuses it takes a variety of forms, some of them quite spectacular.
Calypso is beautiful. There is a solitary leaf at its base, dark green, deeply ribbed. The stem is smooth, lightly purplish, about four or five inches tall. Hanging from it is the inch-long slipper, crowned by two petals and three sepals, all similarly rose colored and lance shaped. The lip has a white apron around the outer edge. Within is a yellow beard spotted with magenta and dark ribs down the lip’s side. At the very bottom edge, beneath the white apron, are two points, like teeth.
Out in the woods and fields I have seen more than 30 or New England’s orchids, but until now never Calypso. Yet I first heard of it before I was particularly interested in wildflowers. When I was an undergraduate studying Robert Frost, I read:
Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways
Half looking for the orchid Calypso.
The lines meant nothing then, but ten years or so later, I began without realizing it to imitate Frost, to wander out of beaten ways in search of flowers, and finally, inevitably I began to search for this one. “Half looking” is fine for poets taking roads less traveled by, but for working folk from out of town it helps having directions where to go. So I called around. Orchiphiles are a clannish bunch, trustful of each other perhaps, but suspicious of just about everyone else. Horror stories abound. The careless walker, the unscrupulous collector, the avaricious nursery owner: any one of these can decimate or even eradicate a stand of orchids. Frederick Case, a well-known Midwestern botanist, writes of seeing a photographer cutting away some coffee-salmon-colored plants from a clump of Calypso to make a better photograph. The offending blossoms had been discolored merely by pollination; thus future generations of Calypso were being sacrificed for art. Case does not describe the size of the rock he threw at the photographer’s head, but surely it was not large enough.
I have an orchid-loving friend who knows a man in Peacham, Vermont, who has Calypso bloom every year near his house. Reportedly there may even be an albino or two, growing whitely among the pink ones. My directions are sketchy: a mile south of the village, left and then right, look for a mailbox. I am driving my old Chevrolet, nearly four hours from Boston, the road dirt, the weather overcast. I could be anywhere, anytime. I could be adrift, washing toward an island.
Finding the house, I visit with the owner. He is kind, friendly, interested that someone such as I would drive up from Massachusetts to see his plants. His wife smiles at me. “Been a cool spring,” he says. “I don’t know that they’re up yet.”
“They’re always up by Memorial Day,” his wife says helpfully. Memorial Day is nine days hence.
“Maybe I’d better go see,” I say.
Across the road from the house stand cedars, markers of wet limy ground. The swamp is damp and mossy and green, the trees light barked and shedding. Sound is muffled here, movement muted; the cool damp swamp envelops me like a green fog.
Suddenly, before I am quite ready, I see a flash of pink. Among last year’s brown leaves shines a solitary green one, rising from it the pale stem and jewel-like blossom. It is as described, except that it is standing in a more open setting than I expected and a few drops of last night’s rain are still resting on the sepals. As I sit studying, the sun breaks partially through the clouds and soft light falls over it.
Nearby I find two other plants in bud. Without their blossoms they are so inconspicuous that, standing, I would never notice them. After a time I range the swamp, looking for more. By Memorial Day others will surely be blooming – perhaps even an albino or two – but for today this is the only specimen in flower.
Calypso wept when Odysseus, anxious to see Penelope and his son Telemachus after so long a separation, left her. I sit for a long time with this Calypso, but at last I recall that I, too, have a wife and two sons waiting for me, and so I return to the car, to the journey, the inaudible words still ringing in my ears, silently singing to me, please stay forever, and, sweet promise, stay forever young.
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