Serapias vomeracea Burm. f. (Briq.) (Long-lipped Tongue-orchid): first wild record for Britain and Ireland GEOFFREY KITCHENER, DAPHNE MILLS, SUE BUCKINGHAM, DAVID JOHNSON & STEPHEN LEMON Close-up of a floret of the single plant of Serapias vomeracea in East Kent (v.c. 15), 27 May 2020. Photographs by Daphne Mills.
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n 23 May 2020, sharp-eyed Kent Botanical Recording Group member Daphne Mills spotted a single plant of what she recognised as a Tongue-orchid, but an unfamiliar species. Consulting others brought a view that this was likely to be Serapias vomeracea Burm. f. (Briq.) (Long-tipped Tongue-orchid), as yet unrecorded in the British Isles other than as a deliberate introduction. A visit by Ian Denholm to its East Kent (v.c. 15) location gave confirmation. The robust and very handsome orchid stood 40cm tall with nine florets, each one subtended by a 5–6cm long bract. The violet-red epichile was long and blade-like (vomeracea means ‘like a ploughshare’). It measured 25 mm long and 8 mm wide at the widest point. The bracts are upwards-thrusting, significantly longer than the hood and have been aptly likened in younger plants to church spires rising over a city skyline (Peacock & Trask, undated).
Serapias species in Britain
Taxonomic treatment of the S. vomeracea complex varies. At the splitters’ end of the spectrum, Delforge (2006) recognises about 18 segregates as full species, although some of these are extremely localised within the wider Mediterranean-Atlantic range of the complex. Amongst these species, the two feasible candidates for the Kent plant are S. vomeracea sensu stricto (Iberia through to the Aegean) and S. bergonii (southern Italy through the Aegean to Turkey). The
only consistently agreed qualitative distinction seems to be the hairiness of the proximal half of the epichile: distinctly hairy in S. vomeracea and subglabrous in S. bergonii. As clearly seen in the photographs, the Kent plant’s epichile is hairy in its proximal half, so pointing to S. vomeracea. The main quantitative distinction is supposed to be the maximum width of the epichile: 5–7.5 mm in S. bergonii and > 8 mm in S. vomeracea. ID measured four of the flowers and their width was very consistent at 7.5–8 mm, so this did not cast any further light. Indeed, moving away from the Delforge treatment, there seems to be general agreement (which Richard Bateman from first-hand experience supports) that in the area of geographical overlap around the Aegean there is a complete continuum between S. vomeracea and S. bergonii, suggesting introgression and interfertility. This adds support to the view of Kühn et al. (2019) that S. bergonii should be subsumed within S. vomeracea at species level, viz. as S. vomeracea subsp. laxiflora. On this lumping taxonomic approach, as well as that of Delforge, the Kent plant remains appropriately named as S. vomeracea. Three species of Serapias have been recorded in the British Isles in recent years: S. parviflora (Smallflowered Tongue-orchid) in v.c. 2 (East Cornwall); S. lingua (Tongue-orchid) in v.c. 19 (North Essex), previously in Guernsey and in v.c. 3 (South Devon); and S cordigera (Heart-flowered Tongue-orchid), which occurred in v.c. 15 (East Kent) in 1996 and BSBI NEWS 146 | January 2021
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