O. anthropophora itself was first described from France in 1753 and until recently was placed in a
genus of its own - Acerus. The primary reason for its isolation was its lack of a spur but subsequent molecular studies revealed however that it was in fact an Orchis and further, that it was very closely related to O. simia. The frequency of hybridization with O. simia and O. militaris had already been
noted and so the studies results didn't really come as any great surprise. Consequently Man Orchid as
it has always been commonly known was reclassified into the 11 strong O. militaris group.
O. anthropophora has a widespread range from Britain and northern France, through most of Europe
down to north Africa across to Syria in the east. It can be rare in some parts of this range but it's generally common without ever being abundant. Clearly the occurence and type of hybridization that
takes place is subject to the existence and numbers of suitable donors.
By far the most common unions are as already mentioned, with O. simia and O. militaris but other
Orchis species have been recorded as producing hybrids with O. anthropophora. In Britain hybrids
are very rare and this is due largely to the extreme rarity of suitable orchis partners. The main area's where hybrids will happen are therefore (and somewhat obviously) those where large numbers of Orchis
species occur and this is predominently France, Italy and Greece though by no means exclusively.
Pictures 1 to 4 below are O. simia hybrids from the Var region of France and it can be seen that in
these example's at least, the plants have inherited the longer inflorescence of O. anthropophora but with
colour and flower formation closer to "simia". The plant depicted in 1 is a very handsome orchid indeed.
The following pictures are from Crete and show an example of hybridization with O. italica . This latter species is probably the most common Mediterranean
Orchis and its sheer numbers make it an obvious and easy partner for the flirtatious O. anthropophora. The third picture is O. italica itself and included for comparison purposes.
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