GENERA MICROSTYLIS AND MALAXIS. 311 
are very short; so that the flowers are almost sessile, and are 
densely drowded into a slender cylindrical spike. In the South- 
Americag Dienias and the Crepidiums the pedicels are usually 
slender and elongate, the flowers fewer and more distant. The 
bracts are almost always shorter than the pedicels, very rarely 
equal to them in length, and usually very much shorter. They 
are persistent, and often become deflexed after flowering. 
The flowers are always small, and often minute, very seldom 
more than 3 an inch across, and usually numerous. The largest 
are those of M. tipuloidea and M. Josephiana. The lip is always 
uppermost in the genus, owing to the faet that the pedicel and 
ovary are not twisted, but retain the normal position. In Liparis 
this position of the flowers is rare, and is almost exclusively 
confined to the section Platystylis, which, it is interesting to note, 
has also ashort and thick column. I do not, however, think that 
this section is closely allied to Microstylis, but am rather inclined 
to consider this correlation, z. e. of the lip uppermost with a short 
column, to bear some relation to fertilization. 
The colour of the flowers is commonly green, but yellow, livid, 
purple, and dark-crimson flowers also occur, especially in the 
section Crepidium. Perhaps the showiest are those of Micro- 
stylis Rheedit, in which they are of a dark but translucent crimson. 
In M. versicolor and M. discolor the flowers, on opening, are 
bright yellow, becoming bright red on withering. 
The sepals are usually broader than the petals, very rarely a 
little narrower, oblong or oblong-lanceolate or ovate, blunt, and, 
like the petals, with revolute margins. The two lateral sepals 
are often falcate and oblique, and then usually much broader than 
the dorsal one. They are in this case opposed to and often longer 
than the lip, and are very liable to become connate for a longer 
or shorter distance. The petals are narrow linear, and, like the 
Sepals, usually spreading or abruptly recurved. The lip is ovate 
‘or ovate-lanceolate, orbicular, or sometimes oblong, entire, or 
lobed, or (in the Rheedii group) laciniate. In a large number of 
species the hind margins are prolonged behind into longer or 
shorter lobes (auricles), which in some cases meet behind, so that 
the column appears to emerge from the centre of a circular lip. 
In almost all the species there is a shallow depression, the fovea, 
Which appears to be a source of attraction to the fertilizers. 
ree veins, which are usually conspicuously thickened, run 
divergently from the baseof thelip. In the Dienias two of these 
