From southern England across central and southern Europe and the Levant to the Caucasus and northern Iran. [Aeg, Alb, Aus, Bal, Bel, Bul, Cor, Cre, Cze, Eng, Fra, Ger, Gre, Hun, Lux, Ita, Mal, Por, Rum, Rus, Sar, Sic, Spa, Swi, Tur, Ukr, Yug; Ana, Cyp, Isr]
Dry to moist soil in full sunlight to light shade, from sea level to 1400 m altitude. Typical habitats include garrigue, roadside slopes, open woods, grassland and pesticide-free olive groves on calcareous as well as slightly acid ground.
Plant slender, (10-)15-60(-70) cm tall with 2-12(-18) flowers in a lax to dense spike. Sepals pale green to yellowish green, (olive-)green, white or purplish violet (the lateral ones sometimes distinctly bicoloured with the mid-vein constituting a boundary), now and then suffused with violet to purplish brown, ovate to elliptic or (ob)lanceolate-oblong, 7-19 × (2-)3-9 mm; dorsal sepal nearly flat (less often shallowly boat-shaped), more or less incurved, from the base reflexed. Petals (ochre-)yellow to olive-green or pale green (often suffused with red to brown) or bright purplish violet to ruby, linear-lanceolate to oblong or (ovate-)triangular with flat to strongly wavy margins, 4-13 × 1.5-7 mm, glabrous to pubescent, recurved to spreading. Lip with (blackish, reddish or purplish) brown ground colour and often a light brown to yellow or yellowish green, less frequently reddish brown margin, straight, nearly flat or with more or less recurved sides, entire or slightly to moderately (rarely deeply) three-lobed close to the middle, 5-18(-20) × 7-18 mm, (sub)glabrous to strongly shaggy along the margin (often more hairy towards the base), otherwise (sub)glabrous; bulges weakly developed to obliquely conical (sometimes absent), distinctly isolated from the margin of the lip (side lobes flat, if present); front edge obtuse to emarginate, usually provided with a short, porrect to downward directed, triangular point; mirror distinct absent in subsp. helenae, most frequently consisting of an H-shaped figure or another simple figure derived from this, sometimes considerably more complicated and/or marbled, distinctly connected to the base of the lip, dull greyish blue to violet (rarely reddish brown), sometimes with a pale border. Column acute (to obtuse); not tapering towards the base (in side view); stigmatic cavity approximately as wide as long and approximately twice as wide as the anther, with dark or pale, lateral, eye-like knobs at base.
Extinction risk predictions for the world's flowering plants to support their conservation (2024). Bachman, S.P., Brown, M.J.M., Leão, T.C.C., Lughadha, E.N., Walker, B.E. https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.19592
