SPECIES DESCRIPTION
SERAPIAS BERGONII Family:- ORCHIDACEAE Common Names:- Ploughshare orchid Synonyms:- Serapias vomeracea ssp. laxiflora. Meaning:- Serapias (Gr) After Serapis an Egyptian deity, a name used by the Greek physician and botanist Dioscorides for an orchid. Bergonii (L) After the French botanist Monsieur P. Bergon. . General description:- Tuberous perennials with unspotted leaves; bracts large and often coloured like the sepals. Flowers borne in dense to lax spikes; sepals and petals forming a close helmet above the lip; Leaves:- Narrow and parallel-sided, channelled, grey-green, the basal sheath-leaves green; bracts much longer than the flowers, mostly suffused with reddish-violet or bluish-violet, occasionally greenish with darker veins. Flowers:- Up to 12 flowers in rather lax spikes, with sepals and petals pale purplish-, bluish- or greyish-violet with darker veins, rarely greenish-white; lip one and a half times the sepals, 18-25 mm long, pinkish-violet, reddish-purple to yellowish-red, with two pale, scarcely coloured, lumps at the base, the middle lobe triangular, narrowed at the base, white-hairy. Fruit:- Key features:- Habitat:- Seasonally damp, open habitats such as grassland, fallow terraces, olive groves and meadow-like patches in dry open shrubby vegetation. 0-800(1200) m. Distribution:- Italy, Greece, W & S Anatolia and Cyprus.Widespread and common on Crete. Flowering time:- Apr to early June Photos by:- Steve Lenton 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. SERAPIAS Tubers:- 2-5, ovoid to globose, entire. Leaves:- Narrow, canaliculate, acute, entire, usually shiny. Flowers:- In a spike. Outer perianth-segments ovate-lanceolate, acute, partially connate, connivent with the linear-lanceolate, acuminate inner lateral to form a galea. Labellum large, constricted into basal hypochile, with two indistinct lateral lobes, and prominent, pendent epichile. Spur absent. Column long. Rostellum small. Viscidium solitary; bursicle simple. Key features:- 1) Labellum divided by a constriction into a concave basal part (hypochile) and a flat, downward- or forward-pointing distal part (epichile). 2) Plant with tubers. 3) Epichile pendent. All species appear to hybridize readily with each other and with species of Anacamptis, Dactylorhiza, Ophrys and Orchis.