Pink butterfly orchid

Description

Anacamptis papilionacea (formerly Orchis papilionacea) is a species of flowering plant in the orchid family Orchidaceae. It is commonly known as the pink butterfly orchid. The species is found in Southern Europe and Northern Africa (Spain, Turkey, Serbia, Cyprus, Lebanon, Aegean Islands), and favors dry and stony ground. Anacamptis is a genus of flowering plants in the orchid family (Orchidaceae); it is often abbreviated as Ant in horticulture. This genus was established by Louis Claude Richard in 1817; the type species is the pyramidal orchid (A. pyramidalis) and it nowadays contains about one-third of the species placed in the "wastebin genus" Orchis before this was split up at the end of the 20th century, among them many that are of hybrid origin. The genus' scientific name is derived from the Greek word anakamptein, meaning "to bend backwards". These terrestrial orchids occur on grasslands, limestone or chalk deposits, or on dunes in Eurasia, from the Mediterranean region to Central Asia. Except the pyramidal orchid (A. pyramidalis), all species of Anacamptis seem to form a clade around the green-veined orchid (A. morio). They have a diploid chromosome number of 32 or 36. A useful character for distinguishing Anacamptis from Orchis where the green-veined orchid clade was formerly included is the basal fusion of the three sepals in Anacamptis. The few bigeneric hybrids are typically between closely related genera, in particular Serapias. Hybrids between the pyramidal orchid and the early purple orchid (Orchis mascula), found in Cumbria (UK) in 1997, proved short-lived because of the highly divergent genomic lineages of the parents.