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Ophrys speculum
Ophrys speculum is land Orchid that has underground tuber, globular, which leaves little flower stem erect simple unbranched about 30 cm. The flowers have a large lip. The three-lobed lip is dark brown, velvety central lobe, triangular, elongated and curved. The lip reddish brown about 13 to 18 mm in length has three lobes with the two triangular sides are turned slightly forward with abundant fine, silky hairs mimicking insect wing cases. The intermediate lobe is glabrous and larger than the side where the speculum is colored blue steel, I-shaped, with yellow trim enclosing the central mirror hairy area.
This species of terrestrial habits is distributed throughout the Mediterranean (Spain, southern France and Corsica) generally throughout Europe. In grasslands, scrublands, shrubs and forests.
fertilization by Campsoscolia ciliata, the males confuse the flowers with a female
Spotted on Mar 16, 2012
Submitted on Mar 16, 2012
15 Comments
@RaquelAntunes thank's!
Beautiful!
maybe ...
try to move out there at other times, earlier and later, to see what happens
Perhaps they have a certain time of day when they're more likely to be on the wing?
@craigwilliams
today I been in the same place, there is a large population but I didn't seen Campsoscolia ciliata, it is incredible that in a population so great in 5 hours did not see any pollinator....
la verdad que si que son preciosas, ahora hay muchas en flor, estoy haciendo un tour por Calpe y alrededores a ver que encuentro, jeje, por que me encantan ver las silvestres!
por cierto, me dirias en benidorm donde las viste? si no es mucha molestia, me gustaria fotografiarlas, gracias!
Estas las vi en Benidorm tambien hace unos cuantos años. Son preciosas y silvestres!
I've also never seen the wasp, the next weekend I'ill return, I will look better
You are right it is very rare that low pollination rate ..... maybe these wasps aren't abundant, or perhaps are disappearing. a big problem!
Spectacular.
By the way. I had a cuddly toy version of these two 'lovers' :)
Have you ever seen Campsoscolia ciliata pollinating it ? I saw loads of these in Andalucia last April but didn't even see the wasp once - not even away from the Ophrys. I tried to find some info. about the wasps behaviour/life cycle/pattern of emergence etc. but failed to come up with much. The first population of O.speculum we found had finished flowering so I counted the amount of seed pods developing. % pollination was less than 1%! of the total flowers, which surprised me for such a common species. I guess with tens of thousands of seeds per pod, that rate of pollination is enough.
yesss! mine too!
yesterday I found lot's of this species, and they were so small! like 3-5 cm height
love it!
My favourite Ophrys :)
done!
Hermosa orquidea por favor agregala ala mission Orchids of the World Gracias
http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/9525...