343 



SHORT NOTES. 



ACERAS ANTHROPOPHORA R. Br. IN NORTH SOMERSET. 111 



May last I was conducted by Mr. A. E. G. Way through the 

 Clifton " wild-garden, " where he cultivates the majority of British 

 flowers and is remarkably successful in his treatment of orchids. 

 Among many other species I saw a line patch of Aceras, number- 

 ing some twenty strong plants. These, Mr. Way assured me, had 

 been derived from a few roots found by him about fifteen years 

 ago in a rough pasture on high ground between Portishead and 

 Clevedon, on the ridge that overlooks and runs parallel with the 

 Channel about twelve miles from Bristol. Mr. Way at that time 

 used the land as a game preserve, and fears that his keen-eyed 

 keeper, whom he instructed to take up some of the roots, must 

 have lifted them all, for he failed to find any more of the plant 

 afterwards, although he searched repeatedly in succeeding seasons, 

 until his tenancy of the land ceased. He has never obtained roots 

 of Aceras from any other source. The place described is a large 

 enclosure of primitive upland pasture on Weston Lodge Farm, at 

 an elevation of under 300 ft., in the parish of Weston-in-Gordano. 

 The Carboniferous Limestone rock crops out through the turf 

 here and there, and carries a characteristic vegetation of Helan- 

 themum Gliamcecistus , Trifolium dubium, T. filiforme, Spircea Fili- 

 pendula, Thymus, &c. Portions of the ground are separated by 

 wire fencing for game-breeding purposes, and these positions are 

 shifted from time to time. The matter is naturally of much 

 interest, seeing that this orchid is essentially an Eastern Counties 

 plant, apparently unknown hitherto farther west than Berkshire. 

 But I notice that Mr. Preston, in his Flowering Plants of Wilts, 

 states that it has been reported from three stations in that county, 

 although he had seen no specimens. It is unfortunate that so 

 rare a plant cannot be shown to exist to-day in North Somerset, 

 but it is not improbable that there may be a future reappearance 

 on the ground where Mr. Way found it. — James W. White. 



Ophrys Trollii Hegenb. — My earliest acquaintance with this 

 variety of the bee-orchis was made through a specimen collected 

 in " Cook's Folly Wood, Clifton, 24 June 1851/' by the late J. H. 

 Cundall, and marked "Drone Orchis." In later years I began to 

 hear mention of a " Wasp Orchis " among young people interested 

 in botany. About July, 1885, four specimens were found on the 

 Leigh (Somerset) side of the Avon, and these accorded well with 

 Reichenbach's description of 0. Trollii, "labello acute triangulo 

 elongato lobis lateralibus plus minusve obsoletis." Moreover, the 

 markings of the lip were paler and more yellow than in the type, 

 and the sepals rather longer and more acuminate. In all the 

 flowers the labellum, viewed in front, presented a long triangular 

 outline four times as long as broad, tapering from the base into an 

 attenuate little-refiexed point. I heard of another specimen on 

 the Gloucester side of the river in 1900, and in July of this year 

 (1907) a patch of about a dozen plants occurred in one spot, and 



