THE EARLY PURPLE ORCHIS— continued. 
The long pod-like ovary, which is sometimes twisted, is below the flower ; but as a 
rule it does not develop its numerous minute and simple ovules until after pollination. 
It is the twisting of the ovary that causes the labellum, originally the posterior or 
highest petal, to become anterior or lowest. In the centre of the flower is the 
column, consisting of the one stamen that is fully formed so as to produce pollen, 
united with the style ; and the pollen is often collected together into two club-shaped 
masses or pollinia, one in each anther- chamber, as may be seen by inserting the 
point of a pencil into the honey-containing spur, so as to imitate the proboscis of 
an insect. 
It will be noticed that in some cases the bract is tinted with the same colour as 
the flower. Some of the sepals or petals are generally so placed as to form a 
protective hood over the central column, thus protecting the pollen and the stigma 
from rain ; whilst in Orchis mascula and many others the labellum is marked with rows 
of coloured dots or lines, which serve as honey-guides to the insect-visitors. It was 
thought, however, at one time that these insects were cheated, no nectar being 
produced, so that Orchids were even termed “sham nectar-producers.” The fact is 
that the nectar is generally not, as in many other flowers, in the cavity of the spur, 
where we might expect it, but actually within its walls, so that the insect has to 
bore through the inner surface of the spur to obtain it. This delays the visitor for 
a time sufficient to allow the sticky cement at the base of the pollen-masses to dry 
and so firmly attach itself to the head of the insect. The two club-shaped 
pollen-masses thus removed from the flower very often bend forward or diverge, 
so that when the insect carries them to another blossom, instead of striking 
against the anther which occupies the same position as that from which they have 
been removed, they may strike upon the viscid stigma lower down at the entrance to 
the honey-spur. Each pollen-mass or pollinium is made up of many grains grouped 
together in little masses, of which again there are many in each of the club-shaped 
pollinia ; and so strong is the cement by which the whole mass is affixed to the 
insect that only part of these masses is torn off by the stigma and one pollinium 
may serve in this way to pollinate several successively-visited flowers. 
This gailv-coloured and conspicuous species, often found in the midst of the 
Wild Hyacinths of our woodlands, was once known by a number of rural names. 
On the Scottish border, we are told, “ children tell one another with mysterious awe 
that the root was once the thumb of some unburied murderer” ; whilst Shakespeare’s 
“Dead Men’s Fingers” is said to be still in use in Sussex. The curious Kentish 
“ Skeat-legs ” refers to the sheathing leaves on the stem ; whilst the more widely 
distributed “Bloody Man’s Fingers” and the Cheshire “ Gethsemane ” obviously 
refer to the blood-like blotches on the lower leaves. 
