Britain's commonest orchid: a rosette of leaves blotched with purple, then a pyramid of pale pink flowers marked with darker loops and dashes
Common spotted orchid — Dactylorhiza fuchsii.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Common spotted orchid
Native · flowers May–Aug · grassland, open woodland, fen, verges
Dactylorhiza fuchsii — Orchidaceae
The common spotted orchid is Britain's commonest orchid, and the one most people meet first: a stout cone of pale pink to purple flowers rising from a rosette of leaves blotched with purple. It grows on lime-rich or neutral ground from chalk downland to road verges and fens, and sometimes appears in such numbers that a meadow turns pink.
How to spot them
- ▸Leaves are green with many purple, oval or elongated spots, usually 7 to 12 on the stem, narrowing towards the top
- ▸Dense, cone-shaped spike of flowers from white through pink to purple, with darker spots, loops and stripes on the lip
- ▸The lip is cut about half-way to the base into three lobes, the central lobe pointed and usually longer than the side lobes
- ▸The stem is solid, not hollow, and the plant stands 15–60 cm high
- ▸Look-alikes: heath spotted orchid grows on acid heath and bog, has rounder spots and a tiny central lip lobe; marsh orchids have hollow stems and (mostly) unspotted leaves
How to know it
Its flowers have a lip cut into three lobes, with the central lobe pointed and usually longer than the two either side
Common spotted orchid — compare the rounded, folded lip of the southern marsh orchid.
A lime-lover of chalk grassland, fens and road verges; its acid-soil counterpart on heath and bog has rounder leaf spots and a tiny central lip lobe
Common spotted orchid — the acid-heath equivalent is the heath spotted orchid.
Its genus name honours the sixteenth-century German physician and botanist Leonhart Fuchs, the man after whom the fuchsia is also named
Common spotted orchid — Dactylorhiza fuchsii.
Squeeze the lower stem: it is solid, unlike the hollow stem of the marsh orchids it hybridises with
Common spotted orchid.
Like every British orchid its seed is as fine as dust and will not germinate without a partner soil fungus, so a seedling may spend years underground before it ever shows a leaf
Common spotted orchid — typical of the family.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Orchidaceae; Dactylorhiza means 'finger-root', from the tubers of the genus, which are lobed like fingers; fuchsii honours Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566)
- •Native, and the commonest and most widespread orchid in the UK, according to the Wildlife Trusts
- •Flowers from May or June to August; the flowers are fragrant and attract day-flying moths, according to the Wildlife Trusts
- •Grows on neutral to lime-rich soils in an enormous range of habitats: chalk grassland, woodland rides, fens, old quarries, dunes, hedgerows and road verges
- •Orchid seed is microscopic and carries almost no food store, so it depends on mycorrhizal fungi in the soil to germinate; the Wildlife Trusts describe the relationship as the fungus feeding the orchid while the orchid's roots protect the fungus
- •It hybridises readily with the marsh orchids, and hybrids are often revealed by faintly spotted leaves
- •Not on Schedule 8 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, but under section 13(1)(b) of the Act it is an offence for anyone who is not an authorised person to intentionally uproot any wild plant. Do not dig up wild orchids
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Common spotted-orchid
- NatureSpot — Common Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii)
- legislation.gov.uk — Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 13