Dactylorhiza sambucina
species of plant
Dactylorhiza sambucina, the elder-flowered orchid, is an herbaceous plant belonging to the family Orchidaceae. It is quite common and widespread throughout much of Europe from Portugal east to Finland and Ukraine. The flowers appear in spring and summer, in various colors from yellow to purple.
Etymology
The name of the genus Dactylorhiza is formed from Greek words δάκτυλος "daktylos" meaning "finger" and ρίζα "rhiza" meaning "root" and refers to the tubers of this plant, that are split into several tubercles. The specific Latin name "sambucina" refers to the smell of elder (Sambucus nigra) emanating by some plants of this species.
The scientific binomial name of this plant was initially Orchis sambucina, proposed by the Swedish naturalist and botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1755. The name was subsequently amended to the one currently accepted (Dactylorhiza sambucina), by the Hungarian botanist Károly Rezső Soó in 1962.
Description
Dactylorhiza sambucina reaches on average 10–40 centimetres (3.9–15.7 in) in height. These plants are geophytes with underground tubers that annually produce new stems, leaves and flowers.
The leaves are amplexicaul and vary from 4 to 7 per plant.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dactylorhiza sambucina” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1314837. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1755 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dactylorhiza sambucina” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.