Atak CORCOELLD. REVIEW 
-- VoL. XXI.] JUBY : 86x32. [No. 247. 
A BRITISH NATURAL HYBRID ORCHIS. 
ORCHIS BRAUNII. 
Orcuis latifolia and O. maculata are now flowering profusely, and the 
question has again cropped up as to whether they are really distinct or only. 
forms of one variable species. Mr. F. Escombe has sent to Kew a fine 
series of both, together with some perplexing intermediate forms, which 
were gathered in a marshy meadow at Shawford, near Winchester, and 
remarks that there seems to be a continuous gradation in size, colour, and 
markings between the two. He asks whether it is a case of fluctuating 
variability in a comprehensive species or hybridisation between two separate 
species? We believe it to be the latter. It was a similar intermediate 
form from the same district that was recorded in 1883 by Townsend, in his 
Flora of Hampshire (p. 341), under the name of O. latifolio-maculata, and 
this hybrid has since been recorded from several other British localities 
where the parent species grow intermixed, as Headington Wick Bog, 
Oxfordshire, in 1886 (Druce, Fl. Oxford, p. 294), Egg Buckland, Devonshire, 
in 1889 (Rolfe in Gard. Chron., 1889, ii. p- 10), and Trewedna Valley, 
Cornwall, in 1909 (Davey, Fi. Cornw., p. 425). Recently it has been sent 
from Gibbons Brook, East Kent, by Mr. John Cryer, of Shipley, Yorks, 
and we believe that other localities have been recorded. On the Continent 
it is known under the name of O. Braunii, having been described by 
Halacsy in 1881 (CErst. Bot. Zeitschr., Xxxxi. p- 137) from specimens 
collected between Hainbach and Steinbach, Lower Austria, and since 
then it has been found in Germany, Switzerland, and France. 
The parent species, in their typical forms, are quite distinct, and largely 
occupy different stations. . latifolia usually occurs in bogs or wet marshy 
meadows, and has stout, fistular stems, rather broad, suberect green leaves, 
and large purple flowers with some purple spots on the lip, while O. 
maculata prefers drier heaths, meadows, and similar stations, and has more 
Slender solid stems, narrower spotted leaves, the basal ones more spreading, 
and much smaller white or pinkish flowers, lined with purple on the more 
Strongly three-lobed lip. The hybrid, as generally understood, may be 
described as intermediate, but has somewhat slender solid stems, spotted 
