190 PLANT LIFE 
regarded at once as parasites. We have 
already seen that vast numbers of the fungi 
feed on dead remains, rather than on living 
plants and animals. There are, likewise, many 
flowering plants which apparently behave in 
a similar manner and they are generally, on 
that account, classed as saprophytes. But, 
as we shall see, a closer examination of the 
facts indicates that many of them more 
nearly resemble the parasites after all, though 
the method of their parasitism is well con- 
cealed. The Bird’s-nest Orchis furnishes an 
excellent illustration of this. 
The bird’s-nest orchis (Neottia, Fig. 21) is a 
fairly common, though frequently overlooked 
inhabitant of the humus soil of dense wood- 
lands. It lives under the ground in the leaf 
mould, except when it pushes up its cluster 
of sickly looking flowers on a yellowish or 
brown stem in early summer. No green 
leaves are produced, though the flowering 
shaft bears rather large brown ones. Hence 
the plant is unable to manufacture carbo- 
hydrate food for itself in the way that its 
green relatives can do. Traced below the 
soil, the flowering stalk is seen to spring from 
a short, stumpy root-stock from which arises 
a huddled crowd of short, brittle roots. 
The special interest of the _ bird’s-nest 
orchis in the present connection centres in 
these roots, for it is through them that, 
somehow or other, the stores of food locked 
up in the humus soil are absorbed by the 
