basin, Anatolia and Crete. It's a member of the O. omegaifera group and takes its name from
Sitia which is the area of Crete from where it was first described in 1988.
O. sitia is generally acknowledged to be of hybrid origin with O. omegaifera as one of the
genetic contributers. Crete is viewed as the home of this ophrys and populations outside of this island are now being viewed suspiciously. On Lesbos and Chios the later flowering plants once regarded as O. sitiaca have now been split off and reclassified as either O. pelinea or O. polycratis and its highly probable that similar species revision will occur over the rest of the Aegean in due course.
Attempting to give advice on identification of this species is all but impossible and perhaps the
only consistent feature amongst the many descriptions I have studied, is the flowering time which
is generally but not unanimously held to be very early ( January to March ). In theory O. sitiaca should be finished on Lesbos before O. pelinea starts and on Crete O. omegaifera will still be some 3 weeks away from flowering by the time O. sitiaca is dead and gone. Delforge himself asserts that O. sitiaca has a huge range of variation and can exhibit characteristics of both its O. omegaifera and its O. fusca lineage. This species needs work !
The photo's are from Lesbos and Chios and taken in the last week of March. This late date raises
questions over identification but the plants overall form suggests O. sitia rather than O. pelinea.
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