DISTRIBUTION. Subsp. atrata is distributed in central and western South Europe, from Portugal to the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. It is particularly common in the greater islands and in the southern part of mainland Italy. [Alb, Bal, Cor, Fra, Ita, Mal, Por, Sar, Sic, Spa, Yug].
Plant relatively slender, 20-40(-60) cm tall with 2-8 flowers in a lax spike. Sepals green (occasionally with a rose-coloured tinge), 10-15.5 × 4-7.5 mm. Petals (olive-)green to muddy ochre-yellow, 6.5-9 × 2.5-5 mm, approximately half as wide as the sepals. Lip with dark brown to blackish brown ground colour, entire (rarely slightly three-lobed) with rounded to truncate base, (8-)10-14 × (8-)10-14.5 mm, shorter than the dorsal sepal, with a thick, marginal, shaggy border of strikingly long hairs all around; front edge emarginate around a short terminal point; bulges obliquely conical (but each of them at most half as large as the stigmatic cavity); mirror H-shaped. Eye-like knobs of the column dark.
