NEOTTIE^—NEOTTIA 105 



in boiling water it becomes a yellowish green.' A clump of 13 fruiting spikes dug 

 up by me at Thorenc was found to consist of separate plants, though growing inter- 

 mixed. The short rliizome is covered with densely packed thick fleshy roots, two 

 root-systems being often found back to back, closely adpressed. This comes from a 

 second bud giving rise to a new root-system on the lower side of the rliizome, 

 opposite the main bud at the foot of the stem, which is always at one end of the mass 

 of roots. The 13 plants referred to might conceivably have grown from the tips of 

 decaying roots, but they might also have come from seed. 



Leighton^ states that the Rev. W. H. Herbert's observations showed that Neottia "is 

 capable of reproducing a new plant from the point of each of its fibres after they have 

 fallen apart, the extreme point becoming the eye or shoot". Ascherson and Graebner 

 {Sjn. p. 895) also state that after the ripening of the fruit the plant usually dies, but the 

 dried flower-spike persists, sometimes for several years. They never found Hving 

 roots beneath such stems, but state that adventive buds are found at the tips of the 

 roots. While no doubt these observations were correct for the rhizomes observed 

 by them, they are not universally true. We have never found, among the few specimens 

 dug up, any sign of adventitious buds at the ends of the" roots, but have always seen 

 a strong bud (sometimes more than one) at the foot of the flowering stem, and 

 occasionally a last year's dead stem — proving that the same rhizome may give rise 

 to flowering stems for at least three years. Sometimes there are two such buds, on 

 opposite sides of the rhizome. Each bud seems to form a separate cluster of roots, 

 which explains the not infrequent occurrence of two back-to-back systems of densely 

 packed roots. No doubt each individual plant finally dies of exhaustion, and dried 

 stems with dead roots thus occur, but ordinarily a new bud is found at the base of 

 the stem, as is the rule with Listera, Epipactis, Corallorhi^a and nearly all ground 

 orchids. Noel Bernard found that the number of plants of Neottia underground was 

 much greater than above the soil, and is said to have thought that many of them 

 led an entirely subterranean existence, even flowering below ground.3 This idea was 

 probably based on accidentally buried stems, of which he himself tells us^ he found 

 one whose seeds had germinated in the capsule. The little plants were club-shaped, 

 the acute end still affixed to the torn tegument of the seed, their surface smooth 

 without absorbent hairs. The buried stem was moist, and contained a close network 

 of mycelium of the fungus Rhi-^^octonia repens, which extended into the capsule and 

 surrounded the seeds. The latter, which cannot germinate without the aid of the 

 fungus, were therefore favourably situated in this respect. Whilst these mycorrliiza 

 disappear in later stages of growth from the tubers of Orchis, the roots of Neottia 

 are permanently infected. This symbiosis is most complete in Neottia, Epipogon and 



' A. and G. Sjn. in, 293. - Fl. Shropshire, p. 434 (1841). 



3 Constantin, Vie des Orchide'es, p. no. t Acad. Sc. Paris, p. 1253 (1899). 



GBO 14 



