NEOTT/E^— SPIRANTHES 95 



short (±4 mm.), horizontal, ending in a sharp dark brown beak. Stigma crescent- 

 shaped, ghstening, slanting gently upwards, with a green nib-shaped rostellum 

 ending in a linear viscid gland, supported by green tapering sides, left behind like 

 the prongs of a fork, when the gland is removed. Anther cordate, brown, resting 

 face downwards on the back of the rostellum. Pollinia wax-like, cream-coloured, 

 spht at the apex, without caudicles, lying horizontally on the upper surface of the 

 viscid gland, and attached to it by their centres. PI. D, fig. 2, shows the S. Irish form. 



PI. E, fig. 4, shows a N. Irish flower (enlarged 3/1) with the side-sepals spread 

 out, and the flower opened so as to show the ghstening stigma tapering above into 

 two acute points wlaich support the long linear very adhesive viscidium. When the 

 latter is removed (together with the two pollinia attached to its back, concealed 

 behind the stigma) the supports are left behind like a two-pronged fork. 



PI. D, fig. I, the N. Irish form was evidently taken from a specimen in which the 

 flowers, especially the lips, were partly withered, which makes them look shorter 

 and more globular than when in perfect condition. 



In 1926 Mr A. J. Wilmott, of the British Museum of Natural History, saw about 

 12 plants in Co. Cork and 6 in Co. Kerry and about 200 of the northern form in 

 Co. Armagh. I He considered the two forms to be specifically distinct, renaming the 

 northern one Spiranthes stricta Rydberg and retaining Smith's name S. gemmipara for 

 the southern plant. The characters relied on to distinguish the latter as a separate 

 species were : shorter stature, broader leaves, acute but not acuminate bracts, denser 

 spike, smaller shorter fatter flowers of a purer white, and shorter and broader lip. 

 PL D, fig. 2. 



Prof. Oakes Ames, the well-known American orchidologist, to whom photographs 

 of both forms were sent, wrote that, judging from the photographs, there did not 

 appear to be any tangible consistent differences between them. Even if the differences 

 were as striking as they were claimed to be, he did not consider them specific in value. 

 He kindly sent me a camera lucida drawing (Text-fig. 9 a) of the lip of a N. Irish specimen 

 and of a Newfoundland one selected at random, identical even to the veining. 



Prof. Fernald of Harvard told me at the Fifth Botanical Congress at Cambridge, 

 in 1930, with reference to Mr Wilmott's statement ^ that the N. American S. Koman- 

 ^offiana is not the same as Chamisso's Unalaskan plant, that Chamisso's material was 

 very poor and dwarf, and forms no criterion by wliich to judge the Alaskan plant. 

 He has compared plenty of material from Alaska with U.S.A. specimens, and could 

 find no specific differences between them — they are in his opinion identical. He con- 

 siders the Irish plant is S. Koman:(offiana, as does also Prof. Oakes Ames of Harvard 

 University, and states that both the N. and the S. Irish forms are found in N. America, 

 that they are there connected by many intermediate forms, and that the differences 

 ' J.B. p. 145 (1927). ' Ibid. p. 148. 



