Corallorhiza hiemalh. 47 



sorted into the side of the other. Three or four bulbs are often con- 

 catenated in the same manner. Bulbs sub-globose, fleshy, yellowish- 

 white, with an investing striated sheathe of a darker hue at the top. 

 Scape greenish-yellow, terete, smooth, and shining, about twelve or 

 fourteen inches high, garnished with three sheathes, the lowest of 

 which proceeds from the root. Sheathes two or three inches long, 

 the two upper ones yellowish-white, lower one brownish. Flowers 

 about fourteen, singular, and rather handsome, consisting of straw -yel- 

 low petals and lip, tipped with brownish-purple, borne on an angular 

 receptacle, and supported by a clavate, convoluted, pedunculate germ, 

 furnished at its base, where it is narrowest and most twisted, with a 

 scale-like or membranaceous, lanceolate bract. The germ is at iirst 

 erect, but afterwards enlarges dining florescence, and finally becomes 

 deflcxed almost in a line with the scape. Petals linear-lanceolate, 

 connivent, acute, yellow tipped with auricula-purple, the two inner 

 covering the lower lip, forming, as it were, an upper lip. covering the 

 thick arcuate stigma, which is yellow, spotted with purple. Up about 

 the length of the petals, unguiculate, trilid, the central lobe becoming 

 convex and dilated towards the end, and crenulate on the margin, 

 (fig. 4.) Leaf solitary,* oval, hiemal, finely plaited, having one central 

 and two lateral nerves conspicuously distinct from the numerous white 

 nerves which make up the texture of the leaf, and contribute to the 



* Willdenow and Pursh describe the plant as having two leaves. I have never 

 found it but with one. 



vol. ir. 12 



