Ophrys speculum
species of plant
Ophrys speculum, the mirror orchid, is a species of Ophrys distributed throughout the Mediterranean that is pollinated exclusively by a single species of scoliid wasp.
Description
A terrestrial orchid up to 25 cm tall and each inflorescence carries between 2 and 8 large flowers. The plants often grow in groups. In bright sunshine the flowers are highly visible as the light reflects off the speculum in the centre of the lip – it is a bright iridescent purple/blue in colour and very glossy. The lip is three-lobed and bordered by a greenish-yellow border which is surrounded by a band of thick velvety hairs which are reddish brown. The sepals and petals are green and marked with violet spots or stripes.
Subspecies
Ophrys speculum subsp. speculum Link – The plant diffusion is circum-Mediterranean (Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula to Anatolia and Lebanon), characterized by dark petals and a lobe from the lip moderately convex, with marginal brownish hairs.
Ophrys speculum subsp. regis-ferdinandii – The plant is found in the eastern Aegean Islands and southwest Turkey at elevations of 0 to 800 meters.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ophrys speculum” 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.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1974931. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ophrys speculum” 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.