Spiranthes romanzoffiana
Irish Lady’s-tresses

Spiranthes romanzoffiana
©Deborah J Long/Plantlife

This beautiful small wild orchid has small creamy-white flowers coiling in three spirals up the stem. It grows in wet grassy places such as marshy meadows in the west of Britain and Ireland.

The number of sites and of plants seems to vary widely from one year to the next, for reasons unknown. From about 70 sites in the 1980s, it is now down to only about 11.

It does not grow at all in the rest of Europe but is widespread in North America.

It has always been rare, and is probably principally threatened by the use of fertilisers and herbicides on land nearby and changes in grazing patterns.