156 NATIVE BRITISH ORCHIDACE.E 



flowering, the upper loosely embracing each other, the uppermost bract-like, sessile, 

 acuminate, sometimes membranous. Spike dense, many-flowered, short, corneal, 

 lengthening later and becoming ovate or oblong. Flowers small, crowded, pale or 

 bright rose, carmine or brilliant rose-red or violet-red, rarely white. Bracts linear- 

 lanceolate tapering to a slender point, narrow, 1-3 -nerved, green or coloured, slightly 

 exceeding the ovary. Ovary sessile, cylindrical, twisted, glabrous, green, often 

 flushed red-violet. Sepals free, ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, acute or obtuse, 

 keeled, i -nerved, the lateral curved, spreading but not reflexed, the upper connivent 

 with the slightly shorter ovate or lanceolate somewhat hooded i -nerved petals to 

 form a rather long helmet. Lip flat, broadly wedge-shaped, deeply 3-lobed, ± 6 mm. 

 long, lobes oblong, nearly equal, truncate or rounded, usually entire, sometunes 

 slightly crenate or toothed, side-lobes divergent. The side-wings of the column run 

 down the lip in the form of two slightly divergent plates with a prolonged rounded 

 apex, acting as guide-plates converging towards the entrance of the spur. Spur 

 slender, long, often exceeding the ovary, with no free honey. Column short (2 mm.), 

 obtuse, with a concave wing on each side, white, more or less tinged with colour. 

 Anther ovate, granular outside, white tinged with pale rose, cells parallel, separated 

 at the base by the rounded low-waisted stigmatic fold. Stigmas two, oval, white, 

 on the concave side-wings of the column, with a whitish or pinkish rugose staminode 

 between each and the anther. The foot of the anther and the rosteUum which it 

 embraces are low down in the flower, partly blocking up the entrance to the spur and 

 separating the two stigmas. Pouch of rostellum hollowed out in the middle beneath.^ 

 Viscidium single, transversely strap-shaped, the two caudicles fastened to its upper 

 surface rather close together in the centre. Seeds oblong, cells of transparent testa 

 transversely netted. 



Var. sanguinea Druce. Flowers bright blood-red instead of rosy pink {B.E.C. 



p. 639 (1928)). , ., , . r 



PI. K, fig. 4 (p. 220). An abnormal form without spur and with almost entire lip, 

 found by Dr T. Stephenson near Winchester in July, 1926. It did not appear to be 

 a hybrid. The flowers were pale rose, and the leaves short and yellowish. Forma 

 ecalcarata Ruppert.' 



A. pjramidalis is at once recognisable by the short dense conical spike of bright- 

 coloured flowers, by the two erect guiding plates on the base of the lip, found in no 



' "duabus foveis pro cruribus unicae glandulae", Rchb. Icones, xiii, 8. 



* A s^cumftn oi Anacamptis pyramidalis x G);»«aima««o/)j-^a was found by the Rev. T.Stephenson 

 on the downs near Winchester in July, 192 5, and was seen by me. The spike was oblong, not pyramidal, 

 the flowers of the colour of G. conopsea, and the lip not so deeply divided as m A. pjra m ! da hs, hut 

 with the guide-plates peculiar to the latter species. PI. 32, fig. i, shows a flower from the hiUs behmd 

 Genoa which appeared to me to be this hybrid, but I failed to note whether the tubers were palmate, 

 and the polhnia on separate viscidia. It was scented like G. conopsea, but the facies was nearer that 

 of A. pjramidalis. Gymnanacamptis Aschersonii Camus, Mon. Orch. Eur. p. 95 (1908). 



