Dactylorhiza majalis(Rchb.) P.F.Hunt & Summerh.

Western Marsh-orchidkeyflower

WFO wfo-0000936751 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dactylorhiza majalis, photographed by Lars Willighagen
fig. a Lars Willighagen, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-07 / obs. 204189959
Dactylorhiza majalis, photographed by Jonathan Prior
fig. b Jonathan Prior, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 142594772
Dactylorhiza majalis, photographed by Charlie Farrell
fig. c Charlie Farrell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 142026667
Dactylorhiza majalis, photographed by Sheelagh Halsey
fig. d Sheelagh Halsey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 141231390
Dactylorhiza majalis, photographed by Susan Marley
fig. e Susan Marley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139303615
Dactylorhiza majalis, photographed by Charlie Farrell
fig. f Charlie Farrell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 138850349
Dactylorhiza majalis, photographed by Wouter Van Landuyt
fig. g Wouter Van Landuyt, CC0 1.0 / obs. 138965833
Dactylorhiza majalis, photographed by Billy Fullwood
fig. h Billy Fullwood, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 140852743

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 38 botanical countries

Regions where Dactylorhiza majalis is native: Altay, East Aegean Is., Irkutsk, Kazakhstan, Krasnoyarsk, Türkiye, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, Føroyar, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayEast Aegean Is.IrkutskKazakhstanKrasnoyarskTürkiyeWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryIrelandItalyNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine Føroyar
Native distribution of Dactylorhiza majalis, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
Føroyar FOR
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Irkutsk IRK
Kazakhstan KAZ
Krasnoyarsk KRA
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 1,174 in flower of 1,214 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Dactylorhiza majalis observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 1,174 of 1,214 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,986 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.9 °C -5.6 °C -0.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.6 °C 21.0 °C 24.0 °C
Annual rainfall 608 mm 971 mm 1,963 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 102 mm 182 mm 384 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,986 research-grade observations of Dactylorhiza majalis that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 531 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Dactylorchis alpestris (Pugsley) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis baltica (Klinge) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis cordigera (Fr.) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis curvifolia (F.Nyl.) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis deweveri Verm.
  • Dactylorchis gracilis Hesl.-Harr.
  • Dactylorchis hoeppneri (A.Fuchs) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis kerryensis (Wilmott) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis lapponica (Laest. ex Hartm.) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis latifolia subsp. brevifolia Bisse
  • Dactylorchis longifolia (Neuman) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis (Rchb.) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis f. albolileacea Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis f. alboliliacea Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis f. ampla (Asch. & Graebn.) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis subsp. cambrensis R.H.Roberts
  • Dactylorchis majalis var. aequiloba (Harz) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis var. albiflora (Tinant) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis var. alborosacea (Erdner) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis var. alpestroides Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis var. atrorubens Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis var. brachyphylla Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis var. brevicalcarata (Harz) Verm.
  • Dactylorchis majalis var. gracilis Verm.

and 507 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.