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NATURE IN WALES VOL. 5, No. 3. AUTUMN 1959 EPIPACTIS PHTLLANTHES IN MERIONETH P. M. BENOIT On the 20th June this year (1959) I found two plants of an unfamiliar orchid growing in sandy grassland near the dunes on Morfa Dyffryn, in Merionethshire. One bore two flower stems the other a single one. This orchid has since been identified by Dr. D. P. Young as Epipactis phyllanthes G. E. Smith, a species of helleborine which is scattered through Britain on calcareous soils, but is local, and is known in Wales only from dune slacks at Kenfig Burrows, in Glamorganshire, and woods on Carboniferous Lime- stone near Llyn Helyg and Mold, in Flintshire1. It is the twenty- second species of orchid to be recorded from Merioneth, though the record of the Large White Helleborine, Cephalanthera Damasonium, was almost certainly an error and the Bird's-nest Orchid, Neottia Nidus-avis, is now extinct in the county. Epipactis phyllanthes is very variable in floral structure, probably because of self-pollination. Self-pollination is likely to result in any peculiarities of structure that a plant may have being present in its descendants also. As the individuals in a closely knit and isolated colony are most probably all recently descended from a single plant, it is not surprising that colonies often have their own special characteristics. Several colonies or ranges of variation have in the past been treated as species, such as the Isle of Wight Helle- borine (E. vectensis) and the Pendulous-flowered Helleborine (E. pendula). It was not until 1952 that these were shown by Y oungl to be really variants of a single good species, for which E. phyllanthes, published by G. E. Smith exactly a century before is the earliest name. Epipactis phyllanthes is included in the Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowesr* and in the key in the new Excursion Flora*. But Young's account was published too recently for the species to be mentioned in older floras descriptions of E. vectensis and E. pendula are given in Summerhayes' book Wild Orchids of Britain6 and in the big Flora of the British Isles6. At the time when I discovered the Dyffryn plants I had companions who I was afraid might pick them or make their precise location generally known, so I said nothing but decided I would return. I could not examine the plants very closely through fear of drawing attention to them, but they could obviously be only E. dunensis, E. phyllanthes or the dubious E. cambrensis difficult species which are best submitted to someone who has made a study