another hybrid?

[JennyS]

Finally managed to figure how to upload images so they would show up in the unidentified Gallery........it only took about an hour or so of muttering and steaming.......

I'm wondering if these are a hybrid between Heath Spotted-orchid (D.maculata) and Early Purple Orchid (O.mascula) or even if such a cross exists......

[IanS]

According to my book there isnt such a hybrid known. Heath spotted orchid does hybridise quite readily though, even with Frog orchids!
Ian

[PeterJL]

Frog Orchid (Coeloglossum viride) is now thought to be better named as Dactylorhiza viridis following work by Bateman et al. and in many of the new Orchid books it is named as a member of the Dactylorhiza group (name not yet changed by BSBI though).

This explains why hybrids can occur more frequently than you would expect perhaps.

[IanS]

Yeah I spotted that after I'd posted. I thought someone would correct me!

[JennyS]

Or might it just be Early Purple with an un-lobed lip?
I've never come across them before so its another (of the many ....) I'm unfamiliar with.

[PeterJL]

You do occasionally come across hybrids between species in what are thought to be a different genus of Orchid but the commonest are between species in the same genus such as the Dactylorhiza group.

Orchis mascula and Dactylorhiza maculata are not only different genus but they don't actually flower at the same time. Most Orchis mascula has finished before D. maculata flowers in my experience.

[JennyS]

Hi Peter - I didn't think it was too likely they did cross, it was just a mad wondering! Though timewise the D.maculata in that field started flowering in the third week of May.

Do you have any suggestions what it could be?
None of the several hundred maculata I've peered at over the last weeks have had the deeper purple-pink upper/outer sepals, which is what made me notice this one. It is growing on dryer ground than the D.maculata and the two Greater Butterfly-orchid (Platanthera chlorantha) there.

[PeterJL]

Jenny this afternoon I gave up all hope of understanding anything beginning Dactylorhiza.

We were out botanising on the Sefton Coast and saw small, deep purple, squat orchids which have all been confirmed as Southern Marsh (D. praetermissa) - every one looked nothing like the Southern Marsh orchids I know - some even having a keeled labellum like D. incarnata species. At first glance I had thought they were all Northern Marsh.

The D. incarnata was all ssp coccinea but ranged in colour from pale salmon ( which to me looks like D. incarnata ssp incarnata) to brick red.

Colour means nothing alone, shape means nothing alone, markings mean nothing alone you have to use a combination of characters and even then you can be wrong. Best always to get ids of these wretched plants confirmed by an expert and if you live in the Outer Hebrides where there are even more combinations then good luck because you'll need it.

Still - I saw about 10 new plants which was good.

[IanS]

Peter
I've had the same problem over Northern marsh orchids. I visited a site last year that is supposed to hold just Northern marsh, however to me they look like southern! Im really not convinced that they aren't in fact Southern and who ever originally id them has got it wrong!
Ian

[PeterJL]

The problem with the ones we saw is that they've all been identified by an Orchid expert confirmed by BSBI etc. so the ids are as authentic as you can get. I think the problem is that depending on the conditions Dactylorhiza species which are variable anyway, vary in size and colour. Since so many of them are purple ish that leads to confusion.

To be fair the Southern Marsh Orchids we saw didn't have the rich purple, diamond-shaped labellum typical of Northern Marsh but they looked nothing like the large spikes of well marked orchids with the bracts emerging from the flowering spike, all of which features I have, until now, associated with Southern Marsh.

I also learned that Southern Marsh Orchid has now reached deepest Cumbria.