SPIRANTHES CERNUA. DROOPING-FLOWERED LADIES TRACES. I 79 



forgotten, modern authors spell the name of our plant " tresses," 

 and suppose It to have been adopted from the resemblance to a 

 tress or curl of hair ; and perhaps the two words may originally 

 have been derived from one root, for certainly many flowing 

 tresses have proved to be the traces by which masculine hearts 

 were chained to the triumphal car of beauty. 



The specific name, cernua, is from the Latin, and alludes to 

 the habit which the flowers have of turning their faces down- 

 ward. Spiranthcs cer7iua might, therefore, be called in English 

 " Drooping-flowered Ladies' Traces." 



We have already noted that there are many varieties of the 

 different species of Ladies' Traces ; and in view of this fact, it 

 will be best for the student to consider all the characteristics 

 very carefully in trying to determine a species, and then to strike 

 an average from the whole. There are several points, however, 

 which will materially assist the young botanist. The first of 

 these is the division of the orenus into two sections. Accordine 

 to Dr. Gray, the species in one of these sections have the flow- 

 ers in three ranks, crowded in a close spike, while those in the 

 second have the flowers in one straight or spirally twisted rank. 

 In the latter case, we may picture the arrangement of the flow- 

 ers to ourselves if we imagine them set upon a string, and this 

 string wound in a spiral around a stick ; in the first case, there 

 are three such strings running closely parallel to each other, 

 and also twisted round the stick as before indicated. Our 

 present species belongs to this three-ranked division. Dr. 

 Chapman and Prof. Wood have essentially the same arrange- 

 ment. The roots also offer some good specific characters, being 

 a mass of fleshy fibres in some species, as in Spiranthes cernua 

 (Fig. 3), and quite tuber-like in others. In some cases, again, 

 the rachis, that is to say, that part of the stem to which the 

 flowers are attached, is perfectly straight, and only the flowers 

 seem coiled around it, while in other species it is screw-like, and 

 seems to carry the flowers with it as it coils. 



The interest which the orchidaceous plants have always in- 



