O. fuciflora is a familiar plant to those who travel to western Europe in search of orchids. It is however
a common Ophrys only to those within the orchid community who fall into the "lumpers" camp - for the
"splitters" it is a rarity and with its extinction in Holland, the only place where it can be identified with
confidence is in England and here it's extremely scarce.
It can be relatively common in its favoured continental locations but is unaccountably absent from large,
seemingly suitable area's. Distribution is however poorly understood and this is perhaps unsurprising
given that its known range overlaps with many similar species ( varieties ? ) particularly in the south of
France and Italy.
Identification is difficult and the illustrations on this page are offered as probably but by no means
definitely the species in question. Generally however O. fuciflora has a distinctive and elegant look about
it and this is largely due to the spreading "skirt" of the lower median lobe margins. This is nicely seen in the first two photo's. This species is never three lobed and the sub marginal hairs are rarely complete
being at their heaviest around the shoulders.
A good area to seek this orchid (and indeed many of its confusing cousins) is southern France where it can
be locally frequent in Isere, Drome and Bouches-du-Rhone. The illustrations are from the aforementioned Provinces of France in late May and a month earlier from Gargano in Italy.
O. fuciflora was first described from Switzerland in 1770 and its common name is Late Spider Orchid despite the fact that its name "fuci-flora" literally means a flower shaped like a bee.
The following pictures are all from Gargano and depict some interesting hybrids. The first example is of unknown parentage and may just be
O. fuciflora with highly unusual markings. The second and third however can be fairly confidently linked with O. neglecta and O. biscutella respectively.
