November, 1903.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



24-3 



but it is a secoudary part. The primary and real struggle 

 in France consisted in the incessant effort to pi'opagate 

 the new ideas, revealed in the lectures of Guizot, Villeniain 

 and Cousin at the Sorbonne ; in the pamphlets of 

 Benjamin Constant and the articles of Armand Carrel ; in 

 the poetry of Lamartiue and the prophecies of Lamennais; 

 and in the salon of the beautiful and intellectual Duchess 

 de Broglie. There, and in similar quarters, was waged 

 the true battle In the political remoulding of the middle 

 class and the foundation of constitutional government lay 

 the victory. In the hopeless obsolescence of the ancie.n 

 ri'gime lay tlie defeat. 



FAMILIAR BRITISH WILD FLOWERS AND 

 THEIR ALLIES. 



By R. Lloyd Praeoek, b.a. 



VI.— ORCHIDS.* 



Of all the orders of British plants, Ferns and Orchids are 

 perhaps the two which are most attractive to lovers of 

 plant-life, either native or exotic. And just as the 

 splendid Adiantnms and Cattleyas of foreign climes form 

 one of the chief interests of the cultivator under glass, so 

 to the British student of nature our more modest forms of 

 Orchids and Ferns possess a special attraction. Orchids 

 are in all ways a group of surpassing interest. This 

 interest centi-es in the flowers, with their amazing range of 

 form and colour, both of which features are connected 

 witli their remarkable structure in relation to cross- 

 fertilization by insects. Though the Britisli Orchid 

 flowers are small in comparison with the gorgeous ti'opical 

 forms, they nevertheless exhibit a variety of adaptation 

 that may well hold the student's attention. In other 

 directions, too, our Orchids invite study. From the point 

 of view of geographical distribution, no British Natural 

 Order offers a more varied field, nor problems of more 

 profound importance in the study of plant-migration. 

 Like the Heaths and Gentians sketched in my last article, 

 the Orchids are a thoroughly wild group. Not a single 

 member of the Order seeks the haunts of man. Towns 

 and tilled ground know them not ; only a few will flourish 

 freely in cultivation, however we coax them. The 

 meadows, heaths, woods and marshes are their stronghold ; 

 here, amid Meadowsweet and Heather, Gorse and Sedge, 

 and in dark woods among beds of rich humus, they open 

 their strange flowers, and disperse their curious powdery 

 seed. 



The British Orchids are all, like their foreign associates, 

 herl)aceous perennial jilants ; hut while a large number of 

 the exotic species ai'e epipliytic in habit, pei'ching on the 

 damp branches of trees and climbers in steaming tropical 

 forests, the British Orchids are all terrestrial. The majority 

 live among the crowded herbage that peoples the meadows 

 and copses. The root-system of most of these consists of 

 a bundle of fleshy fibres. Each season one of the fil)res 

 produced swells into a tuber, which fills itself %vith food for 

 next yeai"'s slioot as the previous year's tuber exhausts 

 itself. The shoot wliich rises annually from the shortened 

 root-stock produces a number of lanceolate or strap-shaped 

 alternate leaves, and ends in a spike of flowers of various 

 colour and form. A few, such as the Bird's-nest Orchis 

 {Neotiia NiiJun-avis), whicli have their home in dark 

 woods, are saprophytes. They draw the whole of the 

 nourishment they require from decaying vegetable matter ; 



*Foi' tlic use of the figures wliicli illustrate this article, the writer 

 is iDilobtecl to Messrs. C. GritUii & Co., Limited. They are taken from 

 his " Open-air Studies in Botany." 



green leaves being tlius rendered unnecessary, are absent ; 

 and the plants are of dull hues of brown and yellow. One 

 of our British Orcliids, the Marsh Helleborine ( Epipactis 

 palustris), has an underground root-stock which creeps 

 extensively — half a foot per year, or more — producing each 

 season a leafy flowering-shoot, and a bunch of root-fibres 

 for its nutrition ; and the Creeping Lady's-tresses (Goorfyera 

 repens) has a similar creeping habit. The saprophytic 

 species have all curious roots and root-stocks. In the 

 Bird's-nest Orchis the root-stock is shortly creeping, 

 surrounded by a dense mass of brown fleshy root-fibres, 

 which bear only a very distant resemblance to a bird's nest. 

 In the Leafless Epipogum (i?. ajjhtjllum) , and the Coral- 

 root (Cm-allorrhiza innata), two very rare species, the root- 

 stock is composed of a branching fleshy mass, resembling 

 coral. Three of the British Orchids are inhabitants of 

 bogs — the very rare Spiranthes lestivalis, the Fen Orchis 

 (Liparis Loeselii), now almost or quite extinct owing to 

 the draining of the fens, and the tiny Bog Orchis (Malaxis 

 paludosa), a greenish-yellow plant a few inches high, 

 growing in cushions of Sphagnum. Both of the last- 

 named species produce each year a bulb-like bud by the 

 side of the old one ; and Malaxis is in addition proliferous, 

 bearing a bead-like fringe of tiny bulbils round the edges 

 of its short leaves. 



Let us next examine the structure of an Orchid flower — 

 any of our common meadow species of Orchis or Habenaria 

 will suffice. The ovary is inferior and drawn out, so that 

 it looks like the stalk of the flower, which is in reality 



Fia. 1. — Single tlower of Sweet-scented Orchis (Sabenaria 

 conopsea). 1, .Ixis of the flower-spike ; 2, bract which subtends each 

 flower ; 3, the twisted ovary ; 4. the upper sepal ; 5, 5, the lateral 

 sepals or wings; 6, 6, the lateral petals; 7, the lower petal or 

 labellum ; 8, the spur formed by the backward prolongation of the 

 labellum ; 9, the two anther- lobes ; 10, the stigmatic surface. 



sessile. The calyx, consisting of three sepals, as in many 

 Monocotyledons, is coloured and corolla-like. The corolla 

 consists of three petals, also coloured, and alternating 

 witli the sepals. As the flower expands, the ovary twists 

 through half a turn, thus inverting the flower, and making 

 the lowest part the uppermost. Thus inverted, the flower 

 exhibits a large upper sepal, which arches over the blossom, 

 forming a kind of hood ; the remaining two sepals, called 

 the wings, spreading horizontally on either side. Of the 

 three petals, two comparatively small ones join the upper 

 sepals in providing a roof for the essential organs ; the 

 third (the labellum). much expanded and brilliantly 

 coloured, spreads downward ; it is continued backwards 

 into a long hollow spur, in which houoy is secreted. The 

 ovarv is prolonged forwards into the inner part of the roof 

 of tlie flower, where it forms a fleshy projecting mass (the 

 column), in which the essential organs are embedded. The 

 single stamen — single in all British Orchids except the 

 Lady's-slipper {Ci/pripcdiiim) — consists of a two-lobed 

 anther embedded in the column. Each lobe of the anther 



