IRature IRotes : 
tCbe Selbocnc Society’s fIDagasinc. 
No. 141. SEPTEMBER, 1901. Vol. XII. 
VARIATION IN ORCHIS MACULATA. 
By the Editor. 
HAVE to thank the Rev. E. F. Linton of Bourne- 
mouth, Hants, Miss Agnes Fry, Hon. Secretary of 
our North Somerset Branch, and Messrs. W. J. 
Rendall of Malvern Link, A. W. Hudson of Cran- 
brook, Kent, and H. Goode of Northampton, who have sent 
me specimens in response to my request appended to Mr. 
Havelock Ellis’s article in Nature Notes for May. 
Mr. Linton sent eight specimens authenticated as his sub- 
species ericetorum. These ranged from twelve to eighteen inches 
in height, the stem in five or six of them being slightly purplish 
above. The leaves were slightly and very faintly spotted, the 
lower cauline ones long and narrow, i.e., from five to eight inches 
long and half to three-quarters of an inch wide, carinate, folded, 
acute, with slightly reflexed points ; the upper leaves much 
smaller (one to two inches long), narrow, linear, flat, and straight. 
The spike had become two to two-and-a-half inches in length, 
and rather lax in fruit ; the bracts were purplish when the stem 
was so ; and the flowers were pale and much as described by 
Mr. Linton in the passage from his “ Flora of Bournemouth ” 
quoted in our May number, with the exceptions that they were 
distinctly honey-scented, and that in some cases the mid-lobe 
of the labellum was not much narrower than the side lobes, nor 
was it so small as I have seen it. In no case, however, could 
the lobes be called sub-equal. 
Miss Fry writes : “ I forward six flowers, all growing in one 
field (with a northerly slope). The ground is rather dry and 
not rich — perhaps this may account for the fact that no really 
dark ones are found. I am inclined to class these as A, B and 
