262 THE ORCHID REVIEW. (SEPTEMBER, 1922. 
single plants, not of tufts. Mr. St. Quintin has grown the North Irish plant 
for seven years, but has seen nothing which might be detached from the 
parent plant, and start life on its own. His plants, though producing fine 
flower spikes (fig 2), never set any seed capsules. Thus deprived of sexual 
reproduction, any latent tendency towards increase by buds would surely 
have been spurred into action. Mr. Ames, who has specially studied the 
genus, says that in all the material 
he has examined, increase takes 
place by single shoots. A winter- 
bud is formed which develops in the 
next growing season to form a 
flowering scape. Drummond’s state- 
ment that each bud puts forth a 
pair of tubers the following spring is 
an inversion of the facts—the bud 
does not precede the tuber, but the 
tuber the bud. In S. Romanzoffiana, 
as in Orchis, the flowering tuber-is 
moribund, the other is a new tuber 
which finally develops the bud. As 
may be seen from figure 1 the new 
tuber has reached its full develop-— 
ment, whilst the hard green bud has 
only just pushed up; it remains 
dormant through the winter, and 
does not break into leaf till the 
following year. 
Mr. W. B. Turrill, who is carry- 
ing on the late Mr. Rolfe’s work, 
tells me that the few specimens of 
FIG. I. TUBERS OF SPIRANTHES 
ROMANZOFFIANA. 
5 i The Garden. 
the South Irish plant at Kew have (eepponmese hom oe ) 
one to two tubers, but that several specimens of the North Irish plant have 
from three to five. S. zstivalis has ordinarily from three to five tubers, but 
only one flowering stem—apparently merely a case of additional root 
fibres being tuberised. S. autumnalis has only two, one bearing the flower 
ing stem, the leaves of which"have disappeared, the other with a rosette of 
leaves which persists through the winter, developing a flowering stem the 
following autumn. Nevertheless, Mr. St. Quintin dug up a plant at Vence 
on April 22nd last with four strong tubers, but only one rosette of leaves 
and no other bud visible. This appeared to be due to the persistence of 
Jast year’s tubers, which had not yet shrivelled up. 
The evidence is incontrovertible that $. Romanzoffiana is not 
