MALAXIDEjE—MALAXIS 109 



cup. Pollinia two, waxy, each composed of two flat separate face-to-face broad- 

 based tapering very thin leaves of pollen, buUt up of angular compound grains wliich 

 never separate. ' Stigma on front of column, in the horseshoe-like space between 

 the sides of the clinandrium, continued downwards as a pocket-shaped cavity behind 

 the oblong projection on the front of the column, and covered with a thin layer of 

 viscid material. Rostellum a minute tongue-shaped mass of viscid matter on the 

 apex of the stigma wliich, by the time the flower opens, has become attached to the 

 thin upper ends of the pollinia.^ 



M. paludosa, the smaUest British orchid, is so inconspicuous as to be hard to see. 

 I have mostly found it embedded in cushions of Sphagnum. It is easily recognised 

 by the tiny flat triangular-looldng green flowers, with two sepals standing up Uke 

 ears, by the erect trowel-shaped much shorter lip, embracing the column, and the 

 larger triangular sepal pointing downwards. The only British orcWd at all Uke it is 

 Hermnium monorchis, the Musk Orchid, a plant of dry hUls with a prickly-looking 

 spike, and flowers with a 3 -fid lip pointing downwards. Moreover its bulb is under- 

 ground, wliilst in Malaxis the flowering bulb is a swelling of the stem above the 

 leaves, their sheatliing bases fitting round it like a glove. PL E, fig. i, compared with 

 PL F, fig. 3, will show the difference at a glance. Malaxis and l^iparis are our only 

 genera with flowers upside down (except Epipogon), and Malaxis is our only gemmi- 

 parous orchid, for the edges of the leaf-tips and often of the leafless sheaths are 

 fringed with tiny gemmae, each capable of producing a new plant, 



Mr T. A. Dymes, F.L.S., states that Malaxis passes the winter as a greenish bulbil 

 at the base of the flowering stem, enclosed in the remains of the sheath of the upper 

 leaf, which contains tracheids (long closed cells) for storing water. The bulbils are 

 heavier than water, and in the winter rains are apt to sink in the Sphagnum, which 

 would be fatal, were it not that the bulbil grows a stalk (rliizome) which pushes 

 it up to the right position. Hence the distance between the bulbs of successive 



years. 



Darwin regarded the membranous expanse between the side-lobes at the apex of the 

 column as the rostellum. He, however, stated that it is covered with a thin layer of 

 viscid material "which is of no use for the transportal of pollen" , and that he found 

 pollinia glued to it, with a large number of pollen-tubes penetrating the stigmatic 

 tissue.3 It therefore functions as a stigma and not as a rostellum, and its position, 

 size, and viscid layer are those of a normal stigma. The little mass of viscid material 

 at the apex of the stigma, which becomes attached to the pollinia, and later to a 

 visiting insect, is the true rostellum. It is apparently not essential that the poUmia 



I Darwin, ¥ert. Orch. ed. 2, p. 133. 



» The description of the column is based on Darwin {loc. cit. p. 130). 



3 Ibid. p. 134. 



