XXXII.— THE GREATER BUTTERFLY ORCHIS. 
Habenaria v ire see ns Druce. 
I N its name and in the details of its pollination this plant illustrates some points 
of interest common to many Orchids. 
It must be admitted that the characters upon which Robert Brown separated 
the genus which Willdenow had named Habenaria (from the Latin habena , a thong, 
from the shape of the labellum) from Orchis appear but slight, so that some of 
Brown’s contemporaries protested against his dismemberment of the latter genus. 
Of late years the cultivators of exotic Orchids have found that, contrary to what is 
usually the case among other plants, there is sufficient physiological identity in some 
sections of this Family to transcend the limits commonly assigned, on structural 
grounds, to the genera, and to permit interbreeding and the production of fertile 
hybrids, known as “ bigeners,” between individuals belonging to genera usually 
considered distinct. This might lead us to think that structural differences used 
to discriminate genera have, perhaps, been unduly emphasised. Those upon which 
Brown separated Habenaria from Orchis were the absence of any pouch or bursicle 
to hold the retinacula of the pollinia ; the parallel or basally divergent position of 
the pollinia themselves ; and the long spur. 
A large number of northern species, both Tropical and Temperate, have been 
described as belonging to this genus, many of them with golden-yellow blossoms, 
and one, the Indian H. longecalcarata , with a spur four inches in length. 
Linne described our two closely-related British forms, H. virescens Druce and 
H. bifolia Brown, under the one name Orchis bifolia , and the first botanist to name this 
larger form as a distinct species was Gaudin, who, in his “ Flora Helvetica” in 1829, 
named it Orchis virescens. It was called Habenaria chlorantha by Babington in 1881, 
which name being pre-occupied was replaced by H. chloroleuca of Mr. Ridley in 
1885, and erroneously by H. montanum Durand and Schinz in 1892. Finally, in 
accordance with our present rules, Mr. Druce restored Gaudin’s original specific 
name in 1907. What is undoubtedly H. bifolia Brown is well described by 
Parkinson in his “ Theatrum,” in 1640, where he says that his 
“ fourth Ranke or order must comprehend all those sorts of Orchide s whose flowers doe represent sundry sorts of insects, flyes, 
or other small creatures, which for their fruitefull generation were anciently dedicated to Apis, who was worshipped as a God 
at Canope, not farre from Alexandria in Egypt , and from thence took the name Serapias. . . . 
“ 3. Orchis Serapias bifolia vel trifolia minor. The lesser twiblade or white Butterfly Orchis . . . hath two or three large 
leaves next the roote . . . the stalke is more than halfe a foote high, with two or three peeces thereon, and a small tuft or 
spike of white flowers at the toppe, thinly set thereon, somewhat resembling white butterflies with their wings spread, each 
flower having a crooked taile behind it full of a sweete liquor.” 
H. virescens Druce is described in the same place as “ The greater Gnat flower,” 
the two forms being readily distinguishable in Parkinson’s figures by the slender 
pointed spur of the former ( H . bifolia ) and the thicker, blunt, club-shaped one in 
the latter ( H . virescens). 
