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Dark red helleborine

 

 

This mid-summer flowerer is a plant of dry habitats and likes chalk. It may even be found in sites where other vegetation is nearly non-existent – on gravelly shore embankments or dunes. In a sense the dark-red helleborine might even be regarded as a synanthrope, a companion of humans; when the plant has started growing in gravel ridges during road construction, it can to some extent be explained by the presence of the symbiotic fungi needed for the growth of the plant. In South Estonia the dark-red helleborine is found very rarely; it is abundant on the islands and in west Estonia.

 

The dark-red helleborine has a height of half a metre on average and may in some years grow in dense bunches, because new young plants develop from the side parts of the rhizome. In some years we can only find a collection of last year’s stems in such a plant stand. The plant has not been destroyed however, but will delight us with its flowering in some coming year.

 

The small flowers are mostly dark red, rarely greenish red or very rarely yellowish. The flowers are located on one side of the stem, spreading a pleasant vanilla scent. Insect pollinators find the nectar in the upper, bowl-shaped part of the flower. The lower part of the flower lip resembles a little the shape of a tiny blood-red heart.

 

The dark red colour is noticeable on stems, leaf margins and reproductive organs and plants that are entirely red are not rare.