" The plant grows very well in the Greenhouse; but 



it requires a little more heat at this season, which seems to 



be its flowering season (November), than the Greenhouse 



affords ; and I find that it flowers best in the coolest part 

 of the stove." 



The genus Habenaria was first separated from Orchis 

 by Willdenow, who limited it to those remarkable West 

 Indian plants, Orchis Habenaria and monorhiza of Swartz, 

 in which the cells of the anther are distinct from the 

 elongated lateral processes of the stigma. In this limita- 

 tion he was wrong, as there are several of the species still 

 retained by him in Orchis, to which the characters of those 

 species equally apply. ' 



Afterwards Dr. R. Brown separated from Orchis all the 

 species in which the glands of the pollen-masses are naked, 

 referring the greater part of them to Habenaria, in two 

 distinct sections, and indicating the existence of the genus 

 now called Gymnadenia. The same learned Botanist also 

 separated from the genus Ophrys, as it stands in Willdenow, 

 the O. monorchis and alpina ; to which he afterwards ap- 

 plied the unappropriated Linnean name Herminium. 



At a subsequent period the late M. Richard restored 

 the genus Habenaria as it was originally understood, re- 

 ferred the greater part of Dr. Brown's Habenarias to a 

 genus he called Platanthera, and distinguished Ophrys 

 alpina under the name of Chamorchis. 



If particular species be taken as the types of these 

 genera, as, for example, Orchis monorhiza of Habenaria, 

 O. bifolia of Platanthera, O. conopsea of Gymnadenia, and 

 Ophrys monorchis of Herminium, there can be no difficulty 

 m understanding the differences upon the existence of which 

 these genera are established. But if a more extended view 

 is given to the subject, the differences insensibly vanish, 

 till at last it becomes doubtful whether the whole of the 

 genera do not rather belong to a single one. 



Thus Gymnadenia is said to be the same as Orchis, 

 except that its pollen-glands are naked ; that is, it has the 

 cells pf the anther parallel, and approximated at their bases; 

 but then Dr. Brown excludes from it the old Satyria viride 

 and albidum, while Richard refers those species to it ; and 

 in the numerous Indian plants of a similar structure, it is 







