THE SWEET-SCENTED ORCHID— continued. 
serve to attach them to the head of an insect-visitor, are not enclosed in a pouch or 
bursicle , as they are in Orchis, but are naked. 
The pre-Linnaean writers were chiefly impressed by the difference of the 
tubercles in this Sweet-scented Orchid from those of the Early Purple Orchis, and 
named it Palmata or Palma-Christi ; but Linn£ looked about for some insect to which 
he could compare its flower and, on account of the long spur, named it conopsea, the 
Gnat Orchis, from the Greek ko>v(j)\]j, konops, a gnat. 
The ancient and widespread belief in the potency of the roots of the Mandrake 
to produce affection, alluded to in Genesis, seems connected with some magical 
doctrine of signatures, or the indication of the properties of plants by their external 
forms, like that which leads to the torturing of a waxen image to inflict evil on its 
original. This would seem to be connected in folk-lore with even the remotest 
resemblance to a human form, such as the palmate tubercles of Gymnadenia or other 
Orchids. The unequal size of the two tubercles in Orchis mascula has probably 
given rise to their name of “Adam and Eve”; but, perhaps, this name may have 
originally belonged rather to palmate tubercles, such as those of O. maculala L. or of 
Gymnadenia. So too the Scottish name “ Love’s Wanton ” belongs, we are told, 
to these species indiscriminately. In Messrs. Britten and Holland’s invaluable 
“ Dictionary of English Plant-Names ” it is said that 
“Rustics believe that if you take the proper half of the root of an orchis and get anyone of the opposite sex to 
eat it, it will produce a powerful affection for you, while the other half will produce as strong an aversion.” 
Gymnadenia conopsea has a hollow stem, unspotted, linear-lanceolate, acute 
leaves, and a long, narrow, many-flowered spike of blossoms. The ovate-acuminate 
bract below each flower is green and three-veined and about the same length as the 
ovary. The flowers are uniformly coloured, rose-red, lilac, or white, and have a 
delicious fragrance which is unusual in this Family and has been compared to that of 
the Clove Carnation, but, to my thinking, far more closely resembles that of Lilac. 
It is sometimes apparently scentless. The late Lord Avebury suggested that the 
white variety might prove attractive to moths, as the coloured forms undoubtedly 
do to butterflies. 
The blossoms are about a third of an inch in diameter : their sepals and petals 
are alike coloured and obtuse, the two lateral sepals spreading widely, whilst the odd 
one and the lateral petals, which are nearly of equal size, slightly converge. The lip 
is rather deeply divided into three approximately equal, flat, rounded lobes and is 
covered with a fine down, whilst its spur is nearly twice as long as the ovary, very 
slender and curved, and is often half full of nectar. The anther is crimson and its 
two chambers are parallel. The linear retinacula of the pollinia are separated by 
the rostellum , a beak-like upward extension of the style, or rather a barren lobe of the 
stigma, the exact function of which is not in all cases clear. 
