Tongue orchid
Serapias lingua
Family · Orchidaceae · Harmless
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The orchid that looks like a hanging tongue: a long, narrow, brick-red lip protruding out and down from a hood of greyish purple sepals.
Fields and pasture · Scrubland · Pine woods · Dunes and sand
Also known asserapias, single-tongue serapias
How to tell it
A loose spike of two to eight flowers. The sepals form a closed beak pointing forward, grey with purple veins. The lip hangs down like a tongue two to three centimetres, brick red or orange, with a single dark shiny callus in the throat, which separates it from the other serapias.
What it is confused with
Heart-flowered serapias
Serapias cordigera
Count the calluses in the lip throat: one only on tongue orchid, two separate ones on the heart-flowered. And the heart-flowered lip is far broader and darker, nearly purple.
What it is for
None. It deceives with neither scent nor nectar: it offers shelter. Insects enter the flower tube to spend the night and leave covered in pollen, and that is the whole strategy.
The law says
Protected by CITES and national law, like all wild orchids. Photograph it, do not pick it or dig up the tuber.