6o OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS 



four inches in length, but may reach six inches, and is rarely 

 more than an inch and a half thick. The slender twisted 

 ovaries hold the blossoms face outward, with their exquisitely 

 fringed petals rising, tier above tier, in a lavender mist. 

 The incurved bracts and the recurved spurs make a series 

 of airy curves seen through the lilac fringes, and the whole 

 effect is of a paler, more delicately fashioned and lovelier 

 flower than the more splendid Large Purple Fringed Orchis. 

 The inch-measure test is a matter-of-fact one to apply in 

 distinguishing these two fringed orchis from one another, 

 but it never fails, for the three-parted fringed lip is never 

 more than one-third to half an inch wide in the smaller plant, 

 vphile the lip of the Large Purple Fringed Orchis is three 

 times that size. There is also a trifling difference in the 

 cutting, the segments appearing notched rather than fringed 

 in the smaller, while they are split into anther-like fringes 

 for quite half their length in the Large Purple Fringed 

 Orchis. Twenty years ago Mr. Gibson made for " Highways 

 and Byways" an illustration of the Smaller Purple Fringed 

 Orchis tangled in a spider-web and receiving the visit of a 

 moth, and wrote of it as follows: 



"The life history of this flower, as it has been revealed to 

 me through recent observations of my own, is of such ab- 

 sorbing interest that I am tempted into a narrative of my 

 investigations. They were the outcome of an intent perusal 

 of Darwin's wonderful discoveries chronicled in his 'Fer- 

 tilisation of Orchids.' This book led me with feverish 

 impulse into the conservatory and field. Like many 



