193 



NOTES ON ORCHIS MASCULA AND O. MORIO. 

 By Colonel M. J. Godfert, F.L.S. 



Os May 9th, 191S, three days after the anniversary of the date 

 on which Hermann Miiller first succeeded in witnessing the fertiUza- 

 tion of Orchis mascida by humble-bees on Stromberg Hill in 1869, 

 and thus confirmed by actual observation the truth of Darwin's 

 theory as to the method of fertilization of this orchis, I made an 

 expedition from Corfe Castle, Dorset, to a certain place where 

 mascula and morio grow together, mainly in the hope of finding 

 hybrids between these two species. I came to a large field carpeted 

 with thousands of cowslips, and with two great colonies of mascula, 

 which the country people there call " llegals," and as they were mag- 

 nificent in all the glory of full flower, they well deserved the name. 

 O. morio was also abundant, but mostly grew in other parts of the 

 field, though a few scattered plants were intermixed with mascula. 



I sat down to watch in the midst of these pleasant surroundings, 

 hoping that I might see insects visiting the flowers. In this, how- 

 ever, I was for a long time disappointed, hut later, when I began to 

 move about and look for hybrids, I saw a large humble-bee, with a 

 conspicuous yellow patch on the thorax (Apathtis vestalis?), alight 

 on a plant of O. mascula, and visit two or three flowers, beginning at 

 the bottom of the spike. At long and uncertain intervals I subse- 

 quently saw no less than six humble-bees of two species — one was 

 very large and entirely black, apparently Bomhus harisellus — visit 

 this orchid, and got close enough in one case to see the insect emerge 

 from the flower with pollinia affixed to its head. As Darwin was 

 unsuccessful in seeing meadow-orchids visited by insects, although he 

 had observed the flowers for not less than twenty years *, I felt that 

 my expedition had not been in vain. 



Botanists have long been puzzled by the fact that the spurs of 

 morio, mascula, and some other orchids are dry, and contain no free 

 honey. Sprengel called the spurs of these orchids false nectaries 

 (scheinsaftblumen), and thought that these plants existed by an 

 organised system of deception. Darwin (Fertilization of Orchids, 

 p. 37) did not believe in this, rightly considering that the intelligence 

 of bees was of too high an order to allow of their repeated deception 

 by such an artifice, and certainly when one sees the rapidity and 

 apparent disgust with which bees immediate!}^ quit a plant which has 

 nothing to give them, it is hard to believe that any bee would visit 

 more than one flower of such a plant. I saw a humble-bee by inad- 

 vertence alight on a spike of Plantago lanceolata, and the way in 

 which he spurned it from him made me smile. Further, these 

 orchids grow in spikes, and the spurs are turned inwards amongst the 

 flowers : I do not believe that any bee sees or notices the spurs at all 

 before he alights on the flower. 



Darwin discovered that the spur of these orchids consists of two 

 layers, and relates {op. cit. 40) that when he cut oil' the end of the 



* Miiller, Discourse before the Naturhistorischen Verein fiir Eheinland und 

 Westfalen, 1869. 



JOUENAL OF BoTA>r. — VoL. 5G. [JuLV, 1918.1 o 



