Man orchid
Orchis anthropophora
Family · Orchidaceae · Harmless
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The orchid whose flowers are little figures: each has a green hood for a head and a lip split into four straps making two arms and two dangling legs.
Fields and pasture · Scrubland · Uplands · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known ashanging man orchid
How to tell it
A narrow, long spike with twenty to sixty small tightly packed flowers. Each flower has a yellow-green hood, often red-edged, and a hanging lip split into four fine segments. It has no spur, which separates it from nearly all spiked orchids.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None. It is one of the easiest orchids to show someone who has never noticed one, because the flower's figure is instantly recognisable with the naked eye.
The law says
Protected by CITES and national law, like all wild orchids. Photograph it, do not pick it or dig up the tuber.