ORCHIDACEOUS PLANTS. 305 
which they fix themselves by means of their long fleshy roots. 
In temperate countries epiphytes are rare, although we have | 
instances of them in our own climate, where the Bird’s Nest 
Orchis, Neottia nidis avis—a brownish scaly plant spinging up 
occasionally in woods, deriving its nourishment from the roots of 
the tree upon which it grows, and the other Malaxis paindosa, is 
found growing parasitically upon the mosses in spongy bogs. 
“There is no order of plants,’’ says Dr. Lindley, in one of his 
papers on Orchidules, in the “ Penny Cyclopedia,” “ the structure 
of whose flowers is so anomalous as regards the relation borne to 
each other by the facts of reproduction, or so singular in respect 
to the form of the floral envelope. Unlike other endogenous 
plants, the calyx and corolla are not similar to each other in form, 
texture, and colour; neither have they any similitude to the 
changes of outline that are met with in such irregular flowers as 
are produced in other parts of the vegetable creation. On the 
contrary, by an excessive development and singular conformation 
of one of the petals called the labellum or lip, and by irregularities © 
either of form, size, or direction of the other sepals and petals, 
by the peculiar adhesion of these parts to each other, and by the 
occasional suppression of a portion of them, flowers are produced 
80 grotesque in form that it is no longer with the vegetable king- 
dom that they can be compared, but their resemblance’ must be 
sought in the animal world. Hence we see such names among 
our native plants as the Bee, Fly, Man, Lizard, and Butterfly 
Orchis, and appellations of a like nature in foreign countries.” Of 
these resemblances some idea may be formed by the annexed 
engraving, where 1 represents Oncidium raniferum, or the frog 
Oncidium, so called because its lip bears at its base the figure of 
4 frog couchant ; 2, Peristeria elata, the Spirito Santo plant of 
Panama, in whose flower we find the likeness of a dove in the act of 
descending on the lip ; 3 is Prescottia colorans, whose lip is a fleshy 
hood ; 4, Gongora fulva; 5, Cirrhea tristis ; 6, Cynoches ventricosum, 
_‘Singularly like a swan, the arched column forming the head and 
heck; 7, Oncidium pulvinatum ; 8, Balbophyllum barbigerum ; 9, 
Catasetum viride; and 10, Peristeria cerina. ‘The roots, according to 
the same authority, are, (1) slender, .simple-branched fibres of a 
: “ent nature, incapable of extension, but burrowing on the 
ney x 
