48 NOTES ON BRITISH ORCHIDS. [May 



and coming into flower at a time when but most other plants have 

 started to grow, makes it doul)ly welcome. The beauty of this, as 

 well as all our native orchids, is much enhanced by planting in 

 clumps or masses of, say, from a dozen to twenty in each, with just 

 sufficient room for the foliage to become perfectly developed, single 

 specimens of any kind giving but a poor idea of what the plants 

 appear when thoroughly established in good, bold masses. 



0. mnculata (spotted orchis). — Tubers palmate, spreading and usually rather 

 flat. Leaves lanceolate and marked with dark i;)urple blotches of irregular size, 

 although green-leaved specimens are by no means uncommon. The colour of 

 flowers, though usually pale purple or lilac, is subject to great variation. Spike 

 short, dense, and conical, Ijip irregularly three-lobed, and crenate. 



The bold, majestic appearance, beauty of both foliage and flowers, 

 and strong, hardy nature all combine to render this plant one of, if 

 not the finest, of our native species. When well grown in good, 

 damp loam, this orchid attains an average height of from 2 to 3 

 feet, and presents a very diff'erent appearance to what it is usually 

 seen in poor, half-starved soils, and high-lying situations. The 

 finest and most luxuriant patches of this orchid I have seen 

 were growing in strong, brown, rather damp loam along the out- 

 skirts of a woodland having a northern aspect. The ground w^as 

 thickly covered with grass, brambles, and bracken, and one of the 

 patches contained consideralily over one hundred specimens, the 

 average size of which was from 2 to 3 feet, but one gigantic 

 plant measured exactly 3 feet 9 inches in height, and bore a most 

 magnificent spike of floM'ers. The leaves of this orchid are of a 

 pale green above, covered with numerous reddish-brown oval spots 

 or irregularly-shaped blotches, and frequently, though not always, 

 overlaid with a silvery-grey cuticle. Underneath, the leaves are 

 often covered with the same silvery cuticle ; but this, I have 

 noticed, is usually wanting when the plant is growing in exposed 

 or high-lying situations, and most noticeable in low-lying, damp 

 ground, and where the plants are shaded from direct sunshine. The 

 lower leaf or leaves are always rounded at the tips, ]jut farther up 

 they become longer and decidedly narrow lanceolate. Green-leaved 

 or unspotted forms are by no means uncommon ; indeed, in this 

 district the proportion of these to that of the typical plant is as 

 three to seven. This variation in the colour of the leaves of 

 0. maculata is by no means easy to account for, and has certainly 

 baffled all my researches to satisfactorily explain. When the 

 reason seems almost conclusive, something crops up to leave us 

 farther from the mark than when we started, and I fear we must 

 say with Bishop Hall , . . " neither is there any miraculous way 

 but in an ordinary course of nature." Neither in this orchid nor 



