spiral or vertical ranks, 4.5-18 em. long, 1-8 em. in di- 
ameter. Floral bracts lanceolate, acuminate-attenuate, 
mostly longer than the flowers, 8-15 mm. long. Flowers 
white, marked with green or cream-tinged, very fragrant 
of vanilla. Sepals oblong-lanceolate to lanceolate, acute 
to acuminate, 6—-13.5 mm. long; lateral sepals free. Petals 
coherent with the dorsal sepal, linear, obtuse to acute, 
6-13.5 mm. long, 1-2 mm. wide. Lip with the basal 
half dilated, rhomboidal, tapering to the obtuse apex, 
broadly ovate to broadly triangular, 6—14 mm. long, 8.5—-8 
mm. wide near the base; basal callosities prominent, re- 
curved. Column about 5 mm. long. 
ComMMEN's: I have been unable to find enough con- 
stant differences in Spiranthes cernua and S.odorata to 
retain them as separate entities. Spiranthes odorata seems 
to be a luxuriant variant of S.cernua. The characters 
found in literature, such as leaves radical (S.cernua) and 
leaves extending up the stem (S.odorata), intergrade 
and break down. Even the lip difference, which may be 
considered as the most reliable character to separate them, 
is not always sufficiently distinct to be dependable. Ames 
(Orch. 1 (1905) 125) in his key grouped the two plants 
together as “*‘Lip ovate-oblong’’ and then separated them 
on leaf differences. In 1834, Nuttall (in Journ. Acad. 
Nat. Sci. Phila. 7, p. 98) said of Neottia odorata: **... 
labello ovato integro, margine undulato subfimbriato. ’’ 
Linnaeus (Species Plantarum 2 (1758) 946) said that the 
lip of Orchis cernua ( Spiranthes cernua) was oblong. An 
examination of a photograph of his type would seem to 
illustrate this. No. 2230 in Herb. Ames which was com- 
pared by Ames with the Linnean type has two plants hav- 
ving flowers with strongly ovate lips. These plants are not 
in complete agreement with Linnaeus’ description. They 
do, however, agree in lip character with Nuttall’s deserip- 
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