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Portrait of Fly orchid

Nature · Wildflowers & flowers

Fly orchid

Native · flowers May–Jul · chalk and limestone woods, scrub and grassland

Ophrys insectifera — Orchidaceae

The fly orchid is a slender, easily missed orchid whose dark brown lip, with a shining blue-silver patch, looks like an insect sitting on the stem. Despite the name it is not the flies it fools but male digger wasps, which are lured by a scent that copies the sex pheromone of the female wasp and try to mate with the flower. It is scarce and declining, mostly in southern England.

How to spot them

  • ▸Slender stem 15–50 cm tall with two to ten widely spaced, insect-like flowers, so it is easily overlooked
  • ▸Lip is dark reddish-brown and velvety, with a shiny blue-silver patch in the middle like a pair of folded wings
  • ▸Three narrow green sepals form the 'wings' or background and two thread-like dark petals stick up like antennae
  • ▸Chalk and limestone woodland glades and rides, scrub, open grassland and quarries, May to July
  • ▸Look-alikes: bee orchid has broad pink sepals and a plump, yellow-marked lip; early spider orchid has a plump, rounded, dark hairy lip and greenish sepals

How to know it

A dark, velvety lip with a shining blue-silver patch, sprouting two dark thread-like petals like antennae, on a slender stem in a chalk woodland glade

Fly orchid — Ophrys insectifera.

Males of two digger wasp species are lured by a scent copying the female's pheromones and try to mate with the flower, collecting its pollen

Fly orchid — sexual deception (pseudocopulation) by Argogorytes mystaceus and A. fargeii.

It is not the flies it deceives, and only two species of a single wasp genus carry its pollen

Fly orchid — pollinated by Argogorytes wasps.

Pollination is so unreliable that few flowers set seed, and its specialised wasps are themselves in decline

Fly orchid — BSBI notes inefficient pollination and wasp decline.

An insect mimic of chalk woods and limestone, it is a bee orchid relative whose lip has no yellow and no pink wings

Fly orchid — a relative of the bee orchid.

Its genus name is Greek for 'eyebrow', and its species name means 'insect-bearing'

Fly orchid — Ophrys insectifera.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Family Orchidaceae; Ophrys is Greek for 'eyebrow'; insectifera means 'insect-bearing'
  • •Native; flowers May to July, starting in May in the south and running to July in the north (BSBI); the Wildlife Trusts give April to July
  • •Sexual deception: the flower releases a scent mimicking a female wasp's pheromones and males try to mate with the lip, collecting pollen and carrying it to the next flower (Wildlife Trusts)
  • •Only two digger wasp species, Argogorytes mystaceus and Argogorytes fargeii, pollinate it in Britain (Wildlife Trusts)
  • •Pollination is inefficient, and BSBI links the orchid's decline to loss of open woodland edges, overgrown scrub and conifer planting, changes in quarry management, drained fens and falling numbers of solitary wasps
  • •BSBI records it as vulnerable and a UK Biodiversity Action Plan priority species since 2007; it is absent from Scotland and Northern Ireland and most frequent in southern England
  • •Not on Schedule 8, but it is an offence under section 13(1)(b) of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 for anyone who is not an authorised person to intentionally uproot any wild plant. Do not dig up wild orchids
  • •The other British Ophrys orchids are the bee orchid, the early spider orchid and the late spider orchid, the last two of which are on Schedule 8

Drill it — 7 cards

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