278 



FIELD AND WOODLAND PLANTS 



and commons of most parts of Britain, flowering from June to 

 August. Its root has two or three flattened tubers with long, 

 finger-Hke lobes ; and the stem is solid, erect, from six inches to 



more than a foot high. The 

 leaves are ovate below, narrow 

 above, and usually marked 

 with many dark spots. The 

 spike of flowers is dense, 

 oblong or pyramidal inform, 

 and two or three inches long. 

 At the base of each flower is 

 a bract usually shorter than 

 the ovary. The flowers are 

 pale purple, lilac, or (occa- 

 sionally) white, and are 

 generally conspicuously 

 marked with irregular Knes 

 and spots of a deeper tint. 

 The sepals are spreading, 

 about a quarter of an inch 

 long ; and the petals are 

 arched over the column. 

 The Up is broad, deeply three - 

 lobed, more or less toothed, 

 either flat or with the lateral 

 lobes shghtly turned back. 

 The spur is slender and a 

 Uttle shorter than the ovary. 

 This Orchis is represented on 

 Fig. 6 of Plate VI. 



Our single example of the 

 LiUacecB is the Butcher's 

 Broom {Ruscus aculeatus), the 

 only British monocotyle- 

 donous shrub. It is of a 

 very dark green colour, varies 

 from one to four feet in height, and is occasionally met with on 

 the wooded heaths of the southern counties. Its rigid, evergreen, 

 leaflike appendages, which are ovate in form, terminating in a sharp 

 spine, are not really leaves, but leaflike branches or cladochs ; for, 

 it will be observed, they bear the flowers and fruits, which are 



THE COMMON- QUAKINO GRASS. 



