Orchis tephrosanthos.
This plant is well figured in the first and second editions of Gerard,p. 156, no. 1. p. 205, no. 2. though under a different name in each, and copied from them into Parkinson, p. 1344, no. 4. These old authors, however, do not mention it as found in England. The earliest information we have of this fact, if we except the allusion to it by Merett, already stated, is recorded in Ray's Catalogus Plantarum, where we learn that it was discovered by Mr. Brown on "the hills by the river Thames, near Cawsham-Bridge, a mile from Reading, and on several other hills on the other side the water towards Wallingford." This last habitat is omitted in the first edition of the Synopsis. Ray tells us in his Journey on the Continent, that he found it near Geneva, and that he had recently observed it in England; and yet it might be suspected that he never gathered it himself at Caversham (the modern name) in Oxfordshire, since be records the place in Gibson's Camden as being in Berkshire. It is found at present on the rising ground among the bushes to the west of the great chalk-pit facing the river Thames; but it is an uncertain plant, like many other Orchideæ, being found some years very abundantly, and then altogether as sparingly. The two habitats quoted in Flora Britannica, from Ray and Sibthorp, for this plant, are the same spot. That this is the tephrosanthos of Willdenow there can be no doubt. It takes its trivial name from the ash-colourcd spike; but this would have been equally applicable to Bauhin's plant. Orchis galea et alis cinereis, Hist. ii. p. 755, which seems not to belong to it, though quoted by Ray, but to O. militaris of Eng. Bot. or of Willdenow.
It might have been supposed that Withering, in his second edition of the Arrangement, intended our present species by his α, since he has uniformly quoted synonyms and figures which refer
