* ’ The Orchid Review 
VoL. XXVIII. MARCH-APRIL, 1920. No. 327-328. s 
lg) ORCHIDS AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. g 
T the meeting of the British Association held at Bournemouth in 
September last a paper was read by Col. M. J. Godfery, F.L.S.,:on 
Orchids of Hants and Dorset, being illustrated by lantern slides, and a 
beautiful series of forty-four paintings by Mrs. Godfery. The lecturer 
remarked that Hants and Dorset were rich in Orchids, among the rarer ones 
being Malaxis paludosa, Neottia Nidus-avis, and Spiranthes estivalis, the 
latter remarkable for its extreme rarity in Britain, and one of its two 
stations being in thé New Forest. 
Gymnadenia conopsea, he remarked, makes a grand show on the chalk 
downs near Winchester, while a brightly coloured robust form, possibly var. 
densiflora, Dietr., grows on wet, slipped ground in the Isle of Wight, in 
company with Epipactis palustris, an “ree of a_ limestone species 
fiourishing in marshy ground. 
The marsh Orchids formed a particularly difficult ' group, the species 
being locally abundant, frequently with Orchis maculata im the immediate 
vicinity, and were sufficiently similar for humble bees to pass from one 
species to another indiscriminately, the consequence being that: natural 
hybrids were frequent, but up to quite recent times all were regarded as 
members ‘of one’ variable species, to which the nameé of O. latifolia was 
applied. There was sti!l some doubt as:to what the latter was, for after the 
separation of O. incarnata, and another green-leayed form which Mr. Druce 
had called O. pratermissa; there still remained a third form, which was 
locally abundant, and which, whatever its status specifically, could be at 
‘once recognised by the veriest tyro by its conspicuously spotted leaves, and 
of which the spots were often ring-like in character, with a more or less 
green centre. It was too common and too uniform to be a es and was 
probably the plant known as O. latifolia on the Continent. 
O. maculata was a puzzling species, for there was another plant that 
was first separated from it by the Rev. E. F. Linton, in his Flora of 
Bournemouth, under the name of O. ericetorum, and its status had not yet 
been definitely decided, though it had been observed that the two usually 
33 
