A spike only a few centimetres high of tiny yellow-green bell-shaped flowers with a sweet honey scent, in short chalk turf
Musk orchid — Herminium monorchis.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Musk orchid
Native · flowers mid-Jun–early Aug · short chalk and limestone turf
Herminium monorchis — Orchidaceae
The musk orchid is Britain's smallest and most inconspicuous orchid: a slender spike a few centimetres tall of tiny yellow-green, honey-scented flowers, so well matched to the short turf that it is often overlooked. It grows in colonies on thin, dry chalk and limestone soils, spreading by little tubers on runners, and has declined in England since 1930 and gone from Wales.
How to spot them
- ▸Very small: a slender spike of 5–15 cm carrying up to about 30 tiny greenish-yellow flowers
- ▸Each flower is small and bell-like, with a three-lobed lip, and smells sweetly of honey
- ▸A pair of small, pale green leaves low on the stem
- ▸Thin, dry, infertile chalk and limestone turf: south-facing terracettes, quarry floors, earthworks, old lime-kiln spoil
- ▸Grows in small groups because it multiplies by runners; flowers mid-June to early August
How to know it
Each year it sends out slender runners bearing new tubers, so it forms little colonies of clones around the parent plant
Musk orchid — BSBI.
Pollinated by many small insects — wasps, flies and beetles — which the flower forces to enter sideways so that they contact its pollen
Musk orchid — BSBI.
Extinct in Wales since 1968, the largest surviving English population is at Noar Hill in Hampshire
Musk orchid — BSBI.
Despite its name, its scent is honey-sweet rather than animal-like, and its species name refers to a single tuber
Musk orchid — monorchis.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Orchidaceae; monorchis refers to a single tuber
- •Native; flowers from mid-June into early August (BSBI)
- •BSBI: pollinated by a wide range of small insects, chiefly Hymenoptera, Diptera and Coleoptera, attracted by the sweet scent; the flower structure forces insects to enter sideways
- •BSBI: each year the plant develops several new tubers on long slender stolons, so it forms small clonal colonies; vegetative reproduction maintains most populations
- •BSBI: regionally extinct in Wales since 1968; substantial declines in England since 1930; surviving plants are mostly in Surrey, Hampshire, Kent, Sussex and Gloucestershire; Noar Hill in Hampshire probably has the largest population
- •Needs grazing to keep the turf below 10 cm, or coarse grass smothers it (BSBI)
- •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 — Herminium monorchis, Musk Orchid
- legislation.gov.uk — Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 13