Lindley’s apparent admission of the weakness of the 
characters used to segregate these so-called species, fol¬ 
lowing workers would have clarified the situation. In my 
opinion, Pucci (Les Cypripediums (1891) 165) stopped 
just short of the solution when he said that C.parviflorum 
appeared to be a variety of C.pubescens with smaller flow¬ 
ers, and that C.pubescens , itself, was somewhat like C. 
Calceolus. In fact, he thought it to be probably only a 
variety with larger flowers. However, Pfitzer, in 1903 
(Orchidaceae-Pleonandrae in A. Engler Das Pflanzen- 
reich, p. 33), still retained all three species and segregated 
them according to the following key: 
Staminode oblong. C. Calceolus 
Staminode triangular 
Lip laterally compressed. C.pubescens 
Lip dorsally compressed. C.parviflorum 
Since it is probable that European botanists have 
based their conclusions upon too little material, it will 
be of interest to include in this discussion some of the 
observations and viewpoints of botanists and naturalists 
o this continent who have had ample opportunity to ob¬ 
serve our yellow Cypripediums in the field. 
As early as 1889, Watson and Coulter (Gray’s Man. 
Bot. ed. 6, p. 511) realized the difficulty involved in dis¬ 
tinguishing C.pubescens from C.parviflorum. They wrote 
of C.parviflorum : “Flowers fragrant; sepals and petals 
more brown-purple than in the next {C.pubescens}, into 
which it seems to pass.” 
-^though Miss Lounsberry (Southern Wild FIs. and 
rees (1901) 73) noted striking intergrading of the two 
so-called species, she followed tradition in retaining them 
as separate entities. She said: “Occasionally, when it 
LC .parmflorum\ is unusually well grown and its relative 
IL.pubescens] is somewhat undersized, they might almost 
be taken for the same species, were it not that the little 
[4] 
