290 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



accidental persistence in some particular strain of A, therel>y appa- 

 rently presenting a puzzling variation in the direction of B. 



In June 1919 I saw five specimens of supposed lalifolia from a 

 reputed Irish station sent to Mr. St. Quintin by Mr. Carruthers, 

 secretary of the Botanical Section of the Belfast Naturalists' Field 

 Club for nearly thirty 3'ears. They were certainly not latifolia, nor 

 were they pure onaculata, though two of them nearl^^ approached the 

 latter, but were, in my opinion, incarnata X maculata. Later 

 Mr. Carruthers wTote : " I examined some reputed stations (for lati- 

 folici) near Belfast, and find that O. maculata is always mixed up 

 with O. incarnata and flowering at the same time, so you are quite 

 correct in saying our plant is a hybrid, it can be nothing else." 



Mr. S. A. Bennett, a keen botanist of the same club, also wrote 

 to Mr. St. Quintin, sending (A) two plants identified as j^rcdter- 

 missa by Dr. Druce, and (B) what he thinks is prwtermissa X 

 maculata. He stated that he had never found satisfactory lati- 

 folia in Co. Down or Co. Antrim, and that he regards all plants he 

 has found with spotted leaves and streaked labels as incarnatax 

 maculata. In the station where B grew, however, there was no 

 incarnata, but plenty of prcetermissa. Later he wrote : — " B is, I 

 feel sure, prcetermissa xmaculata, the latter grows in great quantity 

 amongst these spotted-leaved plants. The latter are in considerable 

 numbers. . . . None of our plants so far as I know have ring-shaped 

 spots. With regard to Col. Godfery's question 4 (J. B. 1919, 141) 

 we can answer 'yes.' In the station from which A and B were sent 

 we get prcBtermissa and maculata but no ring-spotted plant. Ques- 

 tion 5. The answer is again ' yes.' Hybrids are present in quantity 

 and they are not ring-spotted." This confirms my contention that 

 ring-spotted plants are not produced by the crossing of unspotted 

 marsh orchids with maculata. I attach little importance to the 

 presence or absence of leaf-spots; nevertheless, since I have never 

 seen ringed spots except in latifolia and its hybrids, they are some- 

 times useful as indicating the parentage of latifolia. 



With the identification of our spotted-leaved marsh orchid as 

 O. latifolia L., the problem of the British marsh orchids becomes 

 considerably simplified, for there is no great diflficulty in distinguishing 

 incarnata from prcBtermissa. If we keep these three types clearly 

 in mind, the only serious difficulty is the determination of hybrids. 

 If these always held an exact mean between the parents, it would be 

 comparatively easy, but they so often resemble one parent so much 

 more strongly than the other, that clear indications of the second 

 parent are hard to find. They exhibit all degrees of transition between 

 the two parents, so that it is no matter of surprise that, before their 

 role was fully understood, all our marsh orchids were regarded as 

 forming one very variable species. 



There is still the outstanding question as to whether there is in 

 Britain a form of latifolia with unspotted leaves, distinct from 

 prcetermissa. I believed that I found such forms at Winchester and 

 at Broadstone, but the rarity of unspotted latifolia in France makes 

 me feel that this matter requires verification. 



