Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 12.djvu/50

32 the present day in the neighbourhood of Streatley and Pangbourn, answering exactly to the situation which Brown describes; and the latter is said to grow there, and at Caversham in the neighbourhood, on the authority of the same Mr. Brown, in Ray's Catalogus Plantarum.

Vaiilant has given the figure of a flower, t. 31. f. 21. which he regards as only a variety of fusca, and says he gathered it on the same spot with O.tephrosanthos; but we are inclined to believe it belongs to this species. Ray's ''Orchis anthropophora altera. Hist. Plant.'' 1218, seems to answer to it. From the reports we have received of the Harefield O. militaris, mentioned by Blackstone as growing with the fusca, we suspect it to belong to this species rather than to the following. Haller's t. 28. is somewhat doubtful.

Willdenow's specific character, and consequently that of the Hortus Kewensis, does not accord with the English plant; for the middle segment cannot be called bilobed, nor are the bracteas, upon which the editor of Linnæus places his chief dependence, obsolete. The reference to Vaiilant also leads me to suspect it, t. xxxi. f. 24., as well as f. 22. and 23., being O. variegata. The bracteas, however, vary so much in shape in the dried specimens of all the three plants, from the circumstance of the point being caducous, that we ought not, perhaps, to rely too much on the character drawn from this appendage. Should Willdenow's species be found to be distinct, it will be necessary to give our plant a new trivial name; but we leave this to be ascertained by those who have foreign specimens at hand, and who can refer to the figures which he has quoted.

The chief character of our plant is the regular linear incurved segments of the lip, which are broader than in tephrosanthos, and not notched and ragged as in fusca, but much narrower. The flowers grow in a dense spike, which old Gerard describes as ash-coloured.