Page:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.djvu/159

Rh fœtidissima), with purple sepals, yellow petals and stigmas. Flowers not quite so large as the last. Woods and copses. May to July.

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There are nearly forty British species of Orchideæ, divided into sixteen genera; and in the space at our disposal it is impossible to give anything like an adequate account of the group or of the specific characters. An attempt will be made, however, to make the reader acquainted with the general structure by means of three figures. The first of these represents the Marsh Orchis (O. latifolia), a species commonly to be met in wet meadows and marshy places, flowering from May to July. The two tubers are palmate, that is, more or less flattened like a hand, and terminating in finger-like processes. The leaves chiefly spring from the summit of one of these tubers, the lowest acting as sheath for the next, and so on, the tubular flower-stem rising through all the sheaths. The leaves are oblong, and spotted with purple. The inflorescence is a spike, the flowers crowded upon it, but separated by the long three-nerved green bracts. The structure of these flowers will be found to differ widely from all we have considered in these pages. The perianth is placed above the (consequently inferior) ovary, which is twisted. This twist, it will be well to bear in mind, brings the flower "upside down." The three sepals and the three petals are equally coloured, and it is therefore convenient to speak of them as the perianth. There is only one stamen, which is supported by the pistil. Two of the perianth leaves combine to form a hood over the stamen, and a third is greatly larger than the others, divided into three lobes and hanging down like the lip of a labiate flower. This is known as the labellum, and it is continued backwards and downwards as a hollow spur, in which, however, honey is not