ii8 NATIVE BRITISH ORCHIDACE/E 



with lines of violet spots inside, faintly visible from without, glabrous and shining 

 within. At the junction of the lip and ovary is a narrow bright yellow ridge with 

 tender skin and hexagonal cells filled with rather viscous sugar-containing fluid, 

 wliich on gentle pressure flows out in some quantity. Column with broad protruding 

 flat-topped foot, above which it is broad and rather flat expanding into a deep cup 

 at apex. Stigma on the foot and partly on the face of column. Rostellum large, 

 white, heart-shaped, in a fork at the apex of the column (PL E, fig. 5), below the 

 stigma in the natural reversed position of the flower. Anther helmet-like, rounded, 

 sessile in the concave summit of the column with a slight protruding point just above 

 the rostellum, fastened to the back of the column by a narrow band, not falling off. 

 Pollinia pear-shaped, granular, pale yellow, caudicles long, elastic, ribbon-like, 

 attached to base of pollinia and running up nearly their whole length, each fastened 

 to the heart-shaped rostellum. Ripe capsules almost globular, pendent, opening by 

 short slits not reaching base or apex of capsule. 



PI. E, fig. 5, shows a flower (enlarged 2|/i) in its natural hanging position with 

 a sepal and half the lip cut away. The anther has been pushed down a little so as to 

 show the pollinia with their ribbon-like caudicles, which have been detached from 

 the wliite heart-shaped rostellum. 



This extraordinary plant, without roots, leaves, or chlorophyll, is regarded by some 

 authors as parasitic on the roots of Abies, beech, and Vaccinium,^ but although found 

 among them, it appears to have no organs adapted for drawing nourishment from 

 them. It is really a saprophyte, deriving support only from decaying organic matter, 

 such as leaves, etc. In this it resembles Coral lorhi':(a, Neottia, and Monotropa hjpopitys, 

 its appearance in early stages being so like the last-named that it might easily be 

 mistaken for it at a distance. It is hard to realise that an orclrid can be an underground 

 plant, growing and increasing, and giving rise by runners to new plants beneath the 

 soil, going for years without flowering, and only doing so in exceptionally favourable 

 seasons in order to maintain the vigour of the race by cross-fertilisation, after wliich 

 it usually dies. Roots are replaced by the tabular epidermal cells of the rhizome, 

 whose walls are so thin that they are quite as well adapted for absorbing nutriment 

 as root-hairs. On digging up a plant one finds it growing amongst several living 

 but not stem-bearing rhizomes. The spur in profile is straight in front and curved 

 at the back, with a coloured line down the back and sometimes the front, and its 

 apex is slightly channelled. It contains no free honey. The inner wall is very tender, 

 and there are hexagonal cells between the two walls, where sugary liquid accumulates 

 (and also in the expansion at the junction of lip and ovary) wliich is exuded on the 

 least pressure. In the swelling at the base of the stem is a large reservoir for water- 

 storage.2 



' Rouy, F/. France, xiii, 216. ^ Camus, Icon. p. 462. 



