Platanthera bifolia ssp. latiflora
- English: Lesser Butterfly-Orchid
- Swedish: Skosgnattviol
- Finnish: Valkolehdokki
Ok folks, this is where it gets really exciting! This is the first time I’ve ever seen a lesser butterfly-orchid. I went out just to make an inventory of the flowers I have in the forest behind my house, when I came across this one. I very nearly ran back home to grab the camera – just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I’ve learned not to trust that anything will stay put overnight so if I want a picture, there’s no time like present! It was the only one of its kind; I checked the vicinity of this flower and all I found was two dried stems from last year and some leaves, but I can’t tell if someone has nipped the flower from them or if the flower hasn’t started to grow yet.The part where it gets really exciting (besides the thrill of finding something new) is that this subspecies Platanthera bifolia ssp. latiflora of the lesser butterfly-orchid has only recently been classified on its own and it’s not very widely documented yet; not even the distribution is exactly known, but apparently it’s not very rare anyway. Thus it’s possible that the English name is not really lesser butterfly-orchid, but I couldn’t confirm this. It does seem like the same name is used for all of the Plantanthera bifolia sub-species and the same thing applies for the Finnish name, but in Swedish it’s different.
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Image specs: ISO 400, f4, 1/60, Canon 300mm f4L, 21mm ext. tube. It was dark in the forest so the image is dark-ish… and to be honest, it’s not as sharp as I would like it to be but I liked it otherwise. I have some sharper images but they are from a different (=boring) angle.