270 SUB-ALPINE PLANTS 



Malaxis Solander. 

 Flowers small, green or yellowish. Sepals and petals spreading, 

 the latter very small. Lip minute, concave. Pollen masses 4. Leaves 

 very few. About 120 species in the temperate and hot regions of 

 both worlds. 



Malaxis paludosa Swartz. Bog Orchis. 



This, the smallest European Orchid, with small greenish yellow 

 flowers, only grows on the sphagnum of peat bogs, and is very 

 difficult to find. In Switzerland it is very rare and hardly sub- 

 alpine. Central and Northern Europe. British Isles. 



Malaxis monophylla Swartz. 



Tubers green, adjacent. Stem with one oval leaf only. Plant 

 greenish yellow, 5-12 inches high. Flowers minute, greenish. Lip 

 acuminate, entire, turned upwards, concave at the base. Ovary 

 club-shaped, slightly stalked. 



Damp, shady, grassy meadows and other places in the Alps and 

 sub-Alps ; rare. July. 



Distribution. — Switzerland, Tyrol, Scandinavia, Finnland, 

 Siberia, N. Am. 



LiSTERA R.Br. 



Leaves 2, opposite. Flowers small, green, in a slender, spiked 

 raceme. Sepals broader than the petals. Lip long, linear and 

 2-cleft. Pollen masses 2. 



A small European, North Asiatic, and N. American genus. 



Lister a ovata R.Br. Tway-blade. 



Rootstock with numerous thickish fibres, creeping. Stem 1-2 

 feet high, with 2 or 3 sheathing scales at the base, and about half-way 

 up the stem are a pair of broadly ovate green leaves, 3-4 inches 

 long, strongly veined. Raceme long and slender, in fine specimens 

 sometimes 6 or 8 inches. Lip twice as long as sepals or petals, 

 ending in 2 linear lobes. 



Moist pastures and woods from the plains to the lower Alps. June, 

 July. 



Distribution. — Europe, Western and Northern Asia ; N. America. 

 British. 



Listera cordata R.Br. (Plate XXXI.) 



A very much smaller and more delicate plant, 4-6 inches high. 

 The pair of leaves barely an inch long, broadly ovate and slightly 

 cordate at the base. Flowers very small, in a short raceme on a 

 very delicate and often reddish stem. Corolla-lip linear, 2-cleft, 

 with 2 minute teeth at the base. 



Among moss and pine needles in mountain woods extending 

 to about 5000 feet ; very local. May to July. 



