OPHRYDEyE—SERAPIADINyE— ORCHIS 213 



O. e/odes Grisebach, whose unusually exhaustive diagnosis agrees with Webster's and 

 Linton's descriptions, whilst the habitat and early period of flowering also coincide. 



The question as to whether e/odes is a distinct species was discussed by me, with 

 a leaning towards specific rank, mainly on the ground that in Britain they occupy 

 different areas, and usually grow on different soils. ^ I am now inclined to take the 

 more usual view that it is a sub-species of O. macu/afa, from which it is separated 

 by differences which are small in comparison with those between O. maculata and 

 other species of Orchis. The immense variability of the lip in both O. maculata and 

 elodes shows how little reliance can be placed on its shape and lobing as a ground 

 for estabhshing a separate species, as may be seen from PI. 50 and Text-fig. 11. That 

 both sprang from a common ancestor there can be no doubt, an ancestor that pro- 

 bably occurred throughout Britain. Possibly the cumulative effect of long periods 

 of growth on heavy basic soils, acid peat and heaths, and chalk downs respectively, 

 has differentiated it into the tall woodland form with long mid-lobe to the lip, the 

 broad-lipped shallow-lobed elodes, and the equal-lobed type of the chalk downs. If 

 these are not yet distinct species, they are probably races or sub-species in process of 

 evolution into species. Ascherson and Graebner state that elodes is very difficult to 

 cultivate, easily dying off, and resenting any change of environment, but nevertheless 

 shows great constancy under cultivation.^ 



Habitat. Marshes, damp pastures, moors, and wet ground, usually on peaty and 

 acid soils, but not rigidly confined to them. Both the type and elodes occur in a field 

 at Kerry, Montgomery, in a rich loamy clay with no peat. Rarely colonies exist in 

 pure bog, in Sphagnum, though the zone between wet and dry levels is usually 

 preferred.3 Upland moors on coal measures (Riddelsdell). On limestone, W. Suther- 

 land (Marshall, B.E.C. p. 398 (1908)). Great Scar Limestone at Cam Houses, 1580 ft. 

 (J. Cryer, B.E.C. p. 127 (191 1)). Menmarsh, Oxon., on Oxford Clay (Druce). Absent 

 from large parts of the central and eastern counties. 3 "Only form of maculala we 

 found in the Highlands" (Marshall and Shoolbred). In Sweden^ it grows in hay- 

 fields mown yearly in July, and very few plants escape the scythe, or produce more 

 than one tuber. Dr Stephenson found elodes in the Charente5 district of France, in 

 a few patches on sandy peat, and "countless thousands of the slender form familiar 

 on English heaths" above Covadonga in Asturias, Spain, north of the Pyrenees, 

 "where both flora and climate are very much like those of England".^ He also found 

 it to the south of Limoges, and in large numbers in the valley of the Tarn, in the 

 Cevermes, and in returning northward towards Puy and Limoges. In a circuit of 

 about 1200 kil. along the sides of a triangle having Limoges as its apex and the valley 

 of the Tarn as its base, elodes occurred in countless numbers but only one group of 



■ J.B. p. 506 (1921). - A. and G. Syn. ni, 748. 3 J.B. pp. 123-5 (1921)- 



t Lindman, Jot:, cit. {vidt p. 210). 5 J.B, p. 97 (1925). '' Ihid. p. 72 (1927). 



