Every flower on its slim greenish spike looks like a dangling human figure in a peaked cap, with arms and a forked pair of legs
Man orchid — Orchis anthropophora.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Man orchid
Native · flowers late May–Jun · south-facing chalk and limestone grassland
Orchis anthropophora — Orchidaceae
The man orchid is a slim spike of greenish-yellow flowers, each one shaped like a tiny hanging figure with a peaked cap, arms and legs. It is a scarce plant of lime-rich grassland in southern England, centred on Kent and Surrey, that has declined since the nineteenth century and now often survives as a handful of plants per site.
How to spot them
- ▸Each greenish-yellow flower looks like a tiny dangling man: a hood for a cap, two arms, and a legs-and-body lip
- ▸Narrow, dense spike up to 50 cm tall, with oblong leaves in a rosette at the base
- ▸Flowers are often tinged red-brown along the hood edges, and the lip has no spur
- ▸Lime-rich, south-facing grassland, road verges, quarries and occasionally dune slacks, late May to June
- ▸Look-alike: the lizard orchid has a long twisted strap lip; the man orchid's lip is short, with a forked central lobe
How to know it
A chalk-grassland orchid centred on Kent and Surrey, once widespread but now often reduced to fewer than ten plants at a site
Man orchid.
Its former genus name means 'without a horn', because unlike most orchids its flowers have no spur
Man orchid — formerly Aceras anthropophorum.
No one is sure what pollinates it, though beetles and sawflies are the suspects, and hoverflies and ants merely visit
Man orchid — BSBI.
Its northern limit in Britain is a site in North Lincolnshire, and genetic studies show the outlying central English populations are distinct lineages
Man orchid — BSBI.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Orchidaceae; anthropophora means 'man-bearing', from the human-shaped flowers
- •Formerly placed in its own genus as Aceras anthropophorum; Aceras means 'hornless', for the absence of a nectar spur
- •Native; flowers late May to June on south-facing, free-draining chalk or limestone soils (BSBI)
- •Restricted to southern England, with Kent and Surrey holding most populations; the northern limit is High Barn SSSI in North Lincolnshire (BSBI)
- •Has declined greatly since the nineteenth century through agricultural intensification; most remaining sites have fewer than ten plants (BSBI)
- •Pollination is uncertain: research points to beetles and sawflies as the main pollinators, with ants and hoverflies visiting without pollinating (BSBI)
- •The greenish-yellow flowers resemble, in the BSBI's words, a thin man with a disproportionately large peaked cap
- •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
Drill it — 6 cards
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Sources
- Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland — Orchis anthropophora, Man Orchid
- legislation.gov.uk — Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 13