i88 THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 
The bee-orchis (Ophrys apifera) is sometimes found in 
chalk-pits ; and it grows near woods, or in other shady 
places, where the soil is calcareous. It is marked with 
the rich brown and yellow hues which embroider the vel- 
vety coat of the humble-bee ; and in fine plants the flower 
is almost as large as that insect. The delicate lilac petals 
of this blossom are very similar to gauzy wings extended 
ready for flight. Its leaves are glossy, and of a pale- 
green colour; but by the time the flower is quite blown 
they are generally much eaten by insects. 
The fly-orchis (Ophrys muscifera) is plentiful in some 
of the southern counties of England ; the plant generally 
preferring the vicinity of a hedge or bush. It would im- 
mediately suggest the idea of a fly, of a bluish-coloured 
body, settling on a stem; and two small coloured threads, 
situated towards the upper end of the flower, are so fine 
as greatly to resemble the delicate antennae of some of 
those joyous little creatures which are ever dancing about 
in the sunbeam, revelling among the flowers of the bank, 
or the sedges of the pool-side. These two kinds of ophrys 
flower about the latter end of June. 
Let not the reader imagine that in our wild plant the 
man-orchis (Aceras anthropophora) he shall discover any 
striking resemblance to the human frame. There is in- 
deed something like a helmit-covered head, and the small 
linear portions of the flower have, by the fanciful, been 
thought like the limbs of the human bodv : yet perhaps it 
is not attributing too much to the imagination of him who 
first named it, to say that nineteen persons out of twenty 
would never detect the similarity. This orchis has not 
the gay colours of many blossoms of the family, but is of 
a yellowish-green colour. It is about a foot high, and in 
flower during June. It will flourish on no soil of which 
chalk or clay is not the chief ingredient. 
Our most common kinds of orchis plant may be found 
in almost every wood or on every hedgerow. It would not 
be difficult for anyone who walks into the country in spring 
to find the early purple orchis (Orchis mascula). The 
flowers are of a deep lilac colour, sometimes very odori- 
ferous ; and the broad, shining leaves are generally thickly 
spotted with purple. From this plant has been derived 
the salep of commerce. 
