137 . : 



THE PEOBLEM OF THE BRITISH MARSH OKCHIDS. 

 Bx Colonel M. J. Godfery, F.L.S. 



As the season is with us when the marsh orchids are in flower, 

 it may be of interest to point out the problems requiring solution. 



Orchis prcetermissa is used in this paj)er to indicate the marsh 

 orchid with unspotted leaves, other than O. incarnata, and O. lati- 

 folia the one with ringed spots on the leaves. This is not to be 

 taken as an acknowledgement of 'prcBtermissa as a valid name for 

 the plant in question, or as impljnng dissent from Mr. Rolfe's 

 suggestion that the ring- spotted plant is a hybrid. The names are 

 solely used as convenient terms of reference. O. viaculata is em- 

 ployed in the aggregate sense, and includes O. ericetorum Linton. 



Orchis prj:terj^iissa Druce (Rep. Bot. Soc. & E. C. 340 (1913) 

 1914, also J. Bot. 1915, 176). On returning to England in August 

 1914, I was much interested to hear that a new species had been 

 described under this name. I first found it in Surrey in 1916, and 

 was much struck by its beauty, especially by the delicate lavender- 

 mauve of its flowers, which was quite different from anything I had 

 seen on the Continent, except perhaps O. ^palustris at Pisa. I found 

 later it was not alwaj^s of this beautiful tint. Near Godalming I 

 found it in plenty, but here the flowers were red-purple or pinkish 

 rose. Instead, however, of being the rare and local plant I expected, 

 it was reported to be widely spread and plentiful where it occurred. 

 (Its new name implied that it had hitherto been overlooked, and it 

 was diflicult to understand how so striking and abundant a plant 

 could have eluded the keen eyes of field-botanists.) Finally, I read 

 in Mr. Druce's " Notes on the British Orchids " (Rep. 1917, Bot. Soc. 

 & Exch. Club) that Smith's latifolia (Engl. Flora) and the O. in- 

 carnata of the Engl. Bot. were both " mainly yrceiermissa,^'' and 

 that the latifolia of other British authors was either mainly frcGter- 

 missa or included it. It is not therefore a new species in the 

 Sense that it had not been many times seen and recorded before, but 

 only in the sense that it had not been previously differentiated from 

 latifolia. Mr. Rolfe says (Orch. Rev. xxvi. p. 186) that it is quite 

 clear that the name latifolia primarily belongs to the marsh orchid 

 with broad unspotted leaves — in other words, to the one recently 

 described as O. jiraetermissa. He is no doubt right, in so far as it is 

 true that the O. latifolia of British authors was in the main lyrcdter- 

 inissa, as Mr. Druce himself admits, though it also included the 

 ring-spotted plants, and of course hybrids of prcetermissa, for in 

 those days the occurrence of natural h^^brids was hardly yet fully 

 recognized, and they were naturally looked upon as mere varieties of 

 the species. 



Whether 0. latifolia, as thus restricted by Mr. Rolfe, is the 

 plant understood on the Continent to be O. latifolia L. is another 

 question. Incidentally it may be remarked that if such is the case, 

 tliere is nothing new about O. i^rcBtermissa except the name, which 

 would then automatically fall to the scrap-heap as invalid. 



In 1918, in a field near Broadstoiie, Dorset, to my surprise, for 

 JouENAL OF Botany. — Vol. 57. [June, 1919,] sr 



