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171 From Country Life in America, August 1908, 379–80. waRReN h. MaNNiNg the two kinds of Bog Garden the muck swamp that can be made glorious with cardinal flower and gentian, and the sphagnum bog that rejoices in orchids and pitcher plants—how to have a unique garden, instead of mosquitoes and unhealthful conditions, or a big bill for grading (1908) I was greatly rejoiced when buying my summer home in Massachusetts, to find that the old farm included part of a sphagnum bog, and after maneuvering for several months I was able to buy enough land to control the whole of this precious little spot. For you must know that a sphagnum bog is a very much choicer thing than an ordinary plebeian swamp. Orchids will grow in it, and insectivorous plants, and the shyest members of the heath family. Sphagnum is that peculiar moss which is much used by florists, especially in orchid baskets. It is also the chief factor in the formation of peat bogs. It makes a wonderfully dense, soft, springy turf, and trembles under foot, so as to suggest the name “quaking bog.” Sphagnum is always dying below and branching above, so that the lower parts are pale, while the tips are green. The sphagnum bog is the cleanest and healthiest kind of wet place there is, for it is a singular fact that its waters contain no bacteria! Not only is there a complete absence of the ordinary organisms of decay, but the waters are strongly antiseptic. This explains why oak and other trees that have fallen into such bogs have been preserved for many centuries. It also explains why sphagnum bogs furnish the best peat for burning and for horticultural purposes, because the best peat—true peat—is soil in which the plant forms are still clearly visible, whereas in muck the germs of decay have destroyed all trace of vegetable structure. (Unluckily, most people do not understand this obvious and all-important distinction. Muck is cheap; good fibrous peat costs money.) Swamp peat, when burned, yields a great deal of ash; sphagnum peat, very little. Another astonishing fact about a sphagnum bog is that it is poor in plant food, while the common swamp is rich. Both kinds have luxuriant vegetation, and the ordinary muck swamp, when drained and sweetened by the use of lime, becomes good land for leafy crops, such as celery and lettuce, which need plenty of nitrogen. But 172 natuRal PaRks and GaRdEns the sphagnum bog is very poor in nitrogen, and that is why the pitcher plants, Venus’s flytrap, sundew, and butterwort have to get their nitrogen in the form of proteids, by capturing insects and minute animals. This poverty in nitrogen also explains why nobody ever succeeds in growing most of our hardy native orchids. The bog-loving members of the orchid and heath families are now known to be “partial saprophytes.” They are not downright parasites, like the mistletoe and dodder, which get all their nourishment from living organisms and often cause the death of their hosts, but they are more nearly comparable to mushrooms and the Indian pipe, which feed on decaying organic matter. (Coulter and Barnes, “Plant Life.”) This, then, is the secret of growing hardy orchids and pitcher plants, a group which fascinates everybody sooner or later. You cannot reproduce the conditions of a sphagnum bog. The ordinary swamp is wet enough, but presumably has too much nitrogen. And even if you move plants with a liberal amount of their native soil, you cannot be sure that you have transplanted the conditions associated with their saprophytism. Consequently, it is nothing short of vandalism to move native orchids to the garden or woodlot, even if the act is performed by loving hands. Also it is vandalism to fill or drain a sphagnum bog. There are thousands of such bogs in America, but not one to spare. Every one of them should be a botanical garden for these ineffably precious flowers that will perish from the face of the earth if these bogs are drained for farm lands, or filled in to make building lots. The easy, simple, natural, tasteful, economical thing to do is to buy one of these sphagnum swamps which are of no earthly use to a farmer. Anyone who can afford a summer farm home in New England at ten dollars an acre can get one. Then your cultural problem is solved. There is nothing to do but...

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