N£0TT7£^— SPIRANTHES 95 



concealed amongst the sheathing bases of the leaves. This bud arises from the same 

 roots as the flower-stalk, i.e. those of the previous year, which thus precede the bud. 

 At the base of the new bud are two little knobs, which develop into a pair of tuberous 

 roots, thus enabling the bud to tlirow up its flowering stem and produce a new bud 

 in the following year. The same thing happens in Epipactis latifolia, two short roots 

 covered with root-hairs being found at the base of the new shoot, which develop 

 into two cylindrical roots. In this sense the bud precedes the roots or, more strictly 

 speaking, they are developed simultaneously. The plant thus produces two new 

 tuberous roots every year. The pair of the previous year may also persist, and often 

 one or two of the year before, so that there may be from one to six tubers. In Canada 

 Mr Mousley has twice found a plant with 12 tubers due to the formation of two 

 separate root-systems. In the N. Irish plants the usual number is 2-6. 



The plant is not gemmiparous. Drummond in 18 10 said: "Buds destined to flower 

 the following year are formed among the leaves at the bottom of the flower-stalk. 

 The following spring each bud. . .becomes a separate plant". This was taken to 

 mean that each plant produced several adventitious buds, and each bud a new plant. 

 The name gemmipara was given by Smith under this misapprehension. In the United 

 States increase takes place by single shoots (Ames). In Canada, where it is abundant, 

 two buds have several times been found on a plant, but did not separate and become 

 separate plants, only throwing up a second flower-spike on the same plant. Only 

 once were three buds found on a plant.' 



The thickness of the tuberous roots appears to depend on the moisture of the soil. 

 Mr Mousley found that at Hatley, Quebec, in very wet ground the roots were slender, 

 and widely divergent, spreading horizontally. As a rule only two were developed 

 in the autumn, but sometimes one or two more in the spring. On high dry ground, 

 however, most of the plants have three or four new roots each season, and the tuberisa- 

 tion is more developed; the roots becoming much stouter, descending vertically 

 instead of spreading, no doubt in search of moisture. Similarly S. cestivalis, which 

 grows in wet ground, has long rather slender roots, whilst S. autumnalis, a plant of 

 dry places, approaches Platanthera and Orchis in the thickness of its highly tuberised 

 roots, usually only two in number. Articles were published in the O.K. p. 261 (1922); 

 p. 358 (1924); and p. 291 (1930) (Godfery); pp. 71, 296 and 326 (1924) (Mousley), 

 all with photographs; and in the Irish Naturalists' Journal, p. 2 (1928), by Miss M. C. 

 Knowles, with a coloured plate by Miss E. Barnes. 



Fertilisation. This species is entirely dependent on insects for pollination. 

 Mr W. H. St Quintin, who has cultivated several N. Irish specimens for some years 

 at Scampston Hall, Yorkshire, in a cool house with a northern aspect, and put them 

 out-of-doors on warm nights when many insects were flying about, found that they 



• Mousley, O.K. p. 74 (1924). 



