27 
WHAT IS HEPIPACTIS PURPURATA Sm.? 
By G. Cruaripcre Druce, M.A., F.L.S. 
. KE. Sm was 
gathered by Dr. Abbot (author of the Flora of Bedfordshire) in 
June, 1807, and sent by him to Smith on November 22nd of that 
year, with the following letter :—‘‘I have put in for your observa- 
tion a specimen of some plant with the habit of Serapias found at 
the wood near Noris Farm in the parish of Leigh [Worcester- 
shire] which is as much altered in colour [by drying], as the 
Gnaphalium [sent with it] is now what it was, this was of a 
beautiful red lilac all over and was certainly parasitical on the 
stump of a maple or hazel or some such tree: from the lovely 
incarnate with which the whole plant seemed to glow at first view 
i is specimen 
nothing to do with the EZ. purpurata of Smith, which, as suffici- 
the time he wrote have been more conversant with mature violacea, 
which is strikingly different from its juvenile condition, when its 
beautiful violet tint and its long bracts give quite a different facies 
to the plant. 
Mr. Townsend (Fl. Hants, ed. 2, 642) makes the very pertinent 
suggestion that Goodyer’s Hampshire plant, Nidus avis flore et 
caule violaceo purpureo colore, was this. His description (Ger. 
emac. 228) runs:—* This riseth vp with a stalke about nine inches 
high, with a few smal narrow sharpe pointed short skinny leaves, 
set without order, very little or nothing at all wrapping or inclosing 
the stalke; hauing a spike of floures like those of Orobanche, with- 
out tailes or leaues growing amongst them: which fallen, there 
succeed small seed-vessels. The lower part of the stalke within 
