Mainly in eastern Mediterranean Europe, the Aegean islands, Cyprus and Anatolia.
Photographs: with Orchis anatolica etc. in rocky limestone pasture, Ataviros area, Rhodes April 2008.
© Paul Hackney.
Click photographs for larger images.
Similar to Serapias vomeracea. Flowers reddish with a deflexed lip; the dark purple side lobes of the basal part of the lip are erect and visible inside the hood. It is found in a variety of habitats. Kreutz (2002) remarks that it sometimes forms mass populations in central parts of Rhodes.