OPHRYS SITIACA

Family:- ORCHIDACEAE

Common Names:- Sitia orchid

Synonyms:- None

Meaning:- Ophrys (L) Eye-brow, a name used by the Roman naturalist and

philosopher Pliny.

Sitiaca (L) From the area of Sitia E. Crete.

General description:- Small plants, delicate, often only around 7-20 cm high

Leaves:- Oval-shaped.

Flowers:- Inflorescence sparse with 1-4 (- 5) flowers. Sepals 8-16 mm, curved, with

backwards curling edges; varying from greenish to whitish in colour. Lateral sepals

asymmetrical, with the mid-sepal bending over the column. Petals, smooth, flat and

convergent; green often with purple-brown edges; 6-11 mm. tops ragged, truncated,

with wavy margins. The lip is tri-lobed, flat and horizontal, measuring 10-16 x 8-15

mm. Sometimes slightly bent in the shape of a knee-joint. The tops of the lobes

vary from light brown to blackish-brown. The lateral lobes are divergent, triangular,

rounded and curved under the lip. The mid-lobe is humped, rhomboid, and notched.

The blazon is shiny brown, often with blue high-lights, occasionally all blue. It is

spattered with white and bordered at the top with a design like a Greek omega

which is smooth, white, bluish or yellowish, with undefined edges. The stigmatic

cavity is yellowish measuring 3-4 x 3.5-4.5 mm. There is a slight slit at the base of

the lip in the shape of a “V”, which often extends into the blazon in a small groove.

Fruit:-

Key features:-

Habitat:- Grows widely in stony, limey ground among pine trees; in olive groves and

in dry open shrubby vegetation.

Distribution:- Endemic Crete and E. Aegean. Eastern and central Crete from sea

level to 700 m.

Flowering time:- Jan-Mar.

Photo by:- Julia Cross

FAMILY AND GENUS DESCRIPTIONS

ORCHIDACEAE

General description:- Perennial herbs with rhizomes, vertical stock or tuberous

roots, terrestrial, sometimes obtaining nutrition from decaying matter (saprophytic),

usually with symbiotic fungi in or on the roots (mycorrhiza).

Stems:- Sometimes swollen at base to form pseudobulbs.

Leaves:- Entire, spirally arranged or in two opposite rows, one on each side of the

stem (distichous), rarely subopposite, reduced to scales or sheaths in saprophytes.

Flowers:- Inflorescence a spike or raceme. Flowers zygomorphic, the sepals,

petals and stamens apparently inserted higher than the ovary (epigynous), usually

hermaphrodite. Perianth-segments 6, in 2 whorls; median inner segment (labellum)

usually larger and of different shape from the others, usually directed downwards

owing to the ovary or the stem (pedicel) twisting through 180°, often with basal spur.

Anthers and stigma borne on a column formed from fused filaments and style;

stamens 1, rarely 2, with stalkless (sessile) or short-stalked (subsessile), 2-celled

(2-locular) anthers behind or at the summit of the column; pollen-grains single or in

tetrads, bound by elastic threads in packets (pollinia) which may be narrowed into a

sterile, stalk-like caudicle. Ovary inferior, 1-locular, with parietal placentation, rarely

3-locular; stigmas 3, all fertile, or with the median sterile and often consisting of a

beak-like process (rostellum) between the anthers and fertile stigmas; rostellum

often forming 1 or 2 viscid bodies (viscidia) to which the pollinia are attached;

viscidia sometimes enclosed in 1(2), simple or 2-lobed, membranous, pocket-like

outgrowths (bursicles) of the rostellum.

Fruit:- A capsule, splitting open to release the seeds (dehiscing) by 3 or 6

longitudinal slits; seeds numerous, minute, with undifferentiated embryo and no

endosperm.

OPHRYS

General description:- Tubers 2(-3), globose or ovoid, entire.

Leaves:- Usually in a basal rosette, sometimes also present on stem.

Flowers:- Perianth-segments more or less spreading (patent), unequal; outer

oblong or ovate, obtuse; inner lateral smaller, often hairy.The lowest petal (labellum)

entire to 3-lobed, often convex and pouch-like (gibbous), sometimes with an apical

appendage which is often deflexed, hairless (glabrous) or velvety (velutinous),

variably marked, with usually glabrous central area (speculum); spur absent.

Rostellum minute. Viscidia in 2 simple bursicles.

Key features:-

1) Labellum neither inflated nor slipper-shaped; with distinctively coloured and

shaped central area (speculum).

Many species of Ophrys can cross to produce hybrids, which are often fertile.