SPIRANTHES CERNUA. 



DROOPING-FLOWERED LADIES' TRACES. 



NATURAL ORDER, ORCHIDACK.K. 



Stiranthes cernua, Richard. — Stem leafy below and leafy bracted above, six to twenty 

 inches high; leaves linear-lanceolate, the lowest elongated, four to twelve inches long, 

 two to four lines wide; spike cylindrical, rather dense, two to five inch< s long, and with 

 the flowers either pubescent or nearly smooth; perianth horizontal or recurving, the 

 lower sepals not upturned or connivent with the upper; lip oblong and very obtuse when 

 outspread, but conduplicate or the margins much incurved, wavy-crisped above the 

 middle, especially at the flattish and recurved-spreading apex, the callosities at the base 

 prominent, nipple-shaped, somewhat hairy; gland of the stigma linear, in a long and 

 very slender beak. (Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States. See 

 also Wood's Class-Book of Botany.) 



HE plants now called Spiranthcs were placed in the 

 genus Ophrys by Linnaeus, and in that of Neottia by his 

 contemporary Willdenow, and under the names of these genera 

 they must be looked for by the historical investigator. Our 

 own botanist Nuttall, in his earlier works, classes them with 

 Neottia, but in his later writings (1S27), he calls them "Spiran- 

 thcs, a section of the genus Neottia" The genera Ophrys and 

 Neottia still exist, and have given their names to two of the 

 various tribes into which the order Orchidacea is divided; but 

 Spiranthes has now been universally adopted as the generic 

 name of the plants to which our species belongs, even by 

 English authors, with whom the old Neottia spiralis is at 

 present Spiranthcs autumnalis. This last-named plant is prob- 

 ably the only representative of the genus in England, nearly 

 all of the fifty species or so which compose it bring natives 

 of the New World, although only a very few of them are 

 found within the limits of the United States. 



