ORCHIS PRAETERMISSA DRUCE. 
189 
G. CLARIDGE DRUCE. 
Field Botanists, with few exceptions, must have at times 
felt puzzled to put all the forms of the Marsh Orchids they 
meet with under the two species, O. latifolia and 0 . incarnata, 
since in so many cases plants occur which seem to fit neither 
species. A distinguished botanist, Mr. C. B. Clarke, read 
a paper on a plant, which he had found in Hampshire* which 
he held to be the true incarnata of Linnseus and said it ‘ agrees 
with Afzelius’ specimen collected at the identical spot where 
Linnseus first collected his incarnata, and is marked by the 
illustrious Fries 0 . incarnata certiss.’ I find, however, the lip 
is not always marked with yellow, but there is a great con- 
stancy in the flesh-coloured narrow flowers, the shape of the 
labellum, and in the strict inflorescence, while the time of 
flowering usually, if not always, precedes that of its ally. It 
was obvious that when Mr. C. B. Clarke described this some- 
what local form as the true incarnata that there must also be 
a plant or plants passing as incarnata which were not the 
Linnean species, unless indeed, the others, as some doubtless 
thought, consisted of intermediates or hybrids of incarnata 
and latifolia, if indeed macnlata itself may not have entered 
into some of the combinations. One of these forms of incarnata 
has been familiar to me for over 20 years, since it occurs not 
infrequently in my own neighbourhood. A friend of mine, 
Mr. B. Savile Ogle, who is a very skilful horticulturist found 
some plants on the borders of Hampshire and Berkshire 
prior to 1904, and struck by its handsome appearance took 
it to his garden at Steeple Aston in Oxfordshire, where he 
successfully grew it. A reproduction from a photograph 
appeared in the Report of the Ashmolean Natural History 
Society for 1904. The specimen from which it was photo- 
graphed was 28 inches high. Since then it has broken up 
into 9 distinct plants, seven of which flowered and have 
become much shorter. In native habitats it varies from 
12-20 inches. Mr. Ogle has succeded in obtaining it from 
seed and these seedlings are practically identical with the 
parent and come quite true from the earliest stage, being 
like each other and the parent. They flower about 10 — 16 
days (as in the native habitats) later than true incarnata. 
The production of Orchid seedlings is somewhat note- 
worthy and the fact of them coming true satisfied me that the 
original plant was not a hybrid, and as I have found it in 
Northamptonshire, Norfolk, Oxfordshire and Berkshire, there 
1914 June 1. 
Jouvn. Linn. Soc. xix. 206, 1881. 
