Corallorhiza hiemalis. 47
serted into the side of the other. Three or four bulbs are often concatenated
in the same manner. Bulbs sub-globose, fleshy, yellowish-
white, with an investing striated sheathe of a darker hue at the top.
Scape greenish-yellow, terete, smooth, and shining, about twelve or
fourteen inches high, garnished with three sheathes, the lowest of
which proceeds from the root. Sheathes two or three inches long,
the two upper ones yellowish-white, lower one brownish. Flowers
about fourteen, singular, and rather handsome, consisting of straw-yellow
petals and lip, tipped with brownish-purple, borne on an angular
receptacle, and supported by a clavate, convoluted, pedunculate germ,
furnished at its base, where it is narrowest and most twisted, with a
scale-like or membranaceous, lanceolate bract. The germ is at first
erect, but afterwards enlarges during florescence, and finally becomes
deflexed almost in a line with the scape. Petals linear-lanceolate,
connivent, acute, yellow tipped with auricula-purple, the two inner
covering the lower lip, forming, as it were, an upper lip, covering the
thick arcuate stigma, which is yellow, spotted with purple. Lip about
the length of the petals, unguiculate, trifid, the central lobe becoming
convex and dilated towards the end, and crenulate on the margin,
(fig. 4.) Leaf solitary,* oval, hiemal, finely plaited, having one central
and two lateral nerves conspicuously distinct from the numerous white
nerves which make up the texture of the leaf, and contribute to the
* Willdenow and Pursh describe the plant as having two leaves. I have never
found it but with one.
YOIi. II. 12