1913] May,— Cypripedium acaule 73 
usually flat leaves, by the short faintly nerved stipules, by the smaller 
very herbaceous calyx with oblong (not oval or obovate) narrowly 
crimson- or pink-margined lobes, and by its olivaceous (not casta- 
neous or blackish) achene. In fact, P. Fowleri in its characters and 
aspect as well as its habitat is quite unlike the three plants with 
which it has sometimes been confused and has its affinities much 
more with the boreal P. islandicum Meisner, the range of which it 
overlaps on the Straits of Belle Isle. 
Gray HERBARIUM. 
A TERATOLOGICAL SPECIMEN OF CYPRIPEDIUM 
ACAULE. 
JoHN B. May, M. D. 
ABNORMALITIES among flower forms are often of great interest to 
the student of botanical morphology, in that they sometimes furnish 
a clue or a connecting link to an earlier and now extinct form of the 
plant. I therefore make these notes of a specimen of Cypripedium 
acaule, found May 26, 1912, growing in the wild garden of Mr. Francis 
Southwick, at Waban, Mass. The two upper or lateral petals were 
enlarged, with irregular, wavy edges, part of each petal showing the 
parallel veining of the typical form, and part presenting the pink 
coloring, netted veining, and in-curved edges of the third petal or 
labellum. ‘The relationship between the three petals was shown very 
plainly, while in the normal blossom the layman usually considers the 
lateral petals as sepals. The sepals and column were apparently 
normal. Y 
After photographing and sketching the flower, I rubbed some of 
its own pollen on the stigma in an attempt at fertilization, with the 
rather remote possibility of seedlings appearing which would per- 
petuate the oddity. 
Henry Baldwin, in his “Orchids of New England," describes a 
specimen of Cypripedium spectabile found in 1881 near Lake Michi- 
