LISTERA RENIFORMIS. 

 Bv C. F. Sounders. 



COLLECTORS of the higher forms of plant life do not, as a 

 rule, consider a rhododendron brake as worth expending 

 much time or patience upon. The dense shade cast by the 

 foliage of these great shrubs and their mass of roots give 

 them a practical monopoly of the earth in which they grow, and the 

 smaller sort of plants evidently came to the conclusion long ago that 

 they had better keep away. Nevertheless, in the shadow of such 

 thickets, one of our most interesting orchids may be found — Listera 

 rcniforiiiis. It takes keen eyesight, however, to detect the plant, for 

 though it attains a height sometimes of nearly a foot, there are but 

 two leaves on the stalk (and these are small), while the flowers are so 

 dingy in color as to be almost indistinguishable against the brown 

 carpet out of which the plant springs. 



The species will not be found described in Gray's Manual — the 

 nearest thing to it there being L. convallarioidcs. From this L. reni- 

 formis was separated recently by Dr. John K. Small, who collected it 

 on the higher elevations of the Southern Alleghenies, and his descrip- 

 tion (originally published in the Torrey Club Bulletin for July, 1897,) 

 may be read in the appendix of Britton and Brown's New Illustrated 

 Flora. The range there given ior L. reniformis is Maryland, Virginia 

 and North Carolina, but it has been reported at least twice from the 

 Allegheny region of Pennsylvania. Having been so long confused 

 with another species, it is not unlikely that it will be reported from 

 other northern localities. ''■Listera reniformis " to quote from Dr. 

 Small's description of the plant, "differs from its northern relative 

 {L. convallarioidcs) in its more slender habit, the reniform type of the 

 leaves, which are apiculate or short-acuminate at the apex and cordate 

 or sub-cordate at the base, and the [flower] lip, which is sharply cleft, 

 often nearly to the middle, by a V-shaped sinus. The leaf of Listera 

 convallarioidcs is oval and obtuse at both ends, while the lip is cut by 

 a U-shaped sinus." 



The writer, in company with Stewardson Brown, of the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, collected L. reniformis in July, 

 1898, on Negro Mountain, Somerset County, Pennsylvania. The 

 flowers, it was noticed, exhaled a peculiar, unpleasant odor, not unlike 

 that of the common carrion flower {Smilax herbacea).* 



Philadelphia, Pa. 



* In the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for April, iSog, Karl M. Wie^and states that the 

 specific name reniformis had already been used by Don for an orchid of India, and proposes as 

 a substitute foi' Dr. Small's name the new name Z. Stnallii, in honor of the describer. Prof. 

 Wiegand refers to this species specimens from Asia and Japan; these differ from our plant 

 in having smaller flowers and the lips only one-third as long as the sepals. 



