Gymnadenia orchidis

Description

Gymnadenia orchidis is a terrestrial orchid of the Himalaya and adjacent China, distributed through China, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Myanmar and Pakistan, with GBIF documenting some 795 occurrences. It is a plant of open alpine and subalpine meadows, grassy slopes, forest clearings and damp turf, growing in full sun to light shade on humus-rich soils. The species occupies the upper montane to alpine zone; the photographed material from the Chele-La pass in Bhutan at about 3800 m in July, sharing its habitat with Anaphalis busua and Anemone demissa, and from the Linji-Khola and Churta-Khola valleys of West Nepal at 3200-3400 m in June, illustrates its summer flowering across this high-elevation belt.

The plant arises from palmately lobed, fleshy root-tubers and bears an erect, leafy stem. The leaves are several, oblong to lanceolate, sheathing at the base and reduced upward to bracts. The inflorescence is a dense, cylindrical terminal spike of many small flowers, ranging in colour from purple and pink-magenta to occasionally white. Each flower has spreading lateral sepals, a hooded arrangement of the dorsal sepal and petals, and a trilobed labellum bearing a slender, decurved spur about equalling or shorter than the ovary, containing nectar. The pollinaria have naked, exposed viscidia characteristic of the genus. The fruit is a small, erect capsule.

The species belongs to Gymnadenia, a genus of nectar-spurred terrestrial orchids closely allied to Dactylorhiza and Platanthera; it has at times been segregated into Habenaria or treated under broader generic concepts, reflecting ongoing debate over the limits of the orchidine genera. Pollinated by long-tongued insects attracted to its spur nectar, it remains widespread and locally common in Himalayan alpine grasslands, although meadow degradation and grazing may affect individual populations.

Author: Lindl. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, The Orchids of Sikkim and Bhutan (Pearce & Cribb)