Dactylorhiza sambucina(L.) Soó

Elder-flowered orchid

WFO wfo-0000936871 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dactylorhiza sambucina, photographed by Elias
fig. a Elias, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205243288
Dactylorhiza sambucina, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. b Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202772610
Dactylorhiza sambucina, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. c Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202773856
Dactylorhiza sambucina, photographed by RAUL DAL SANTO
fig. d RAUL DAL SANTO, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 199591789
Dactylorhiza sambucina, photographed by Mirko Ubović
fig. e Mirko Ubović, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198638962
Dactylorhiza sambucina, photographed by xulescu_g
fig. f xulescu_g, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 192959527
Dactylorhiza sambucina, photographed by Felicia Seichter
fig. g Felicia Seichter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195078927
Dactylorhiza sambucina, photographed by Mirko Ubović
fig. h Mirko Ubović, CC0 1.0 / obs. 192302461

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
3997185
Filed as
Dactylorhiza sambucina (L.) Soó
Det. by
B. Steudel 2025-01-01
Collected
Collector unknown 1862-03
Origin
FR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 24 botanical countries

Regions where Dactylorhiza sambucina is native: Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSiciliaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine Sardegna
Native distribution of Dactylorhiza sambucina, 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
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR

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 1,279 in flower of 1,316 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Dactylorhiza sambucina 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. 1,279 of 1,316 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 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 1,935 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.5 °C -6.2 °C -0.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.8 °C 20.1 °C 24.9 °C
Annual rainfall 629 mm 1,260 mm 2,084 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 99 mm 205 mm 391 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 1,935 research-grade observations of Dactylorhiza sambucina 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 61 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 sambucina (L.) Verm.
  • Dactylorhiza fasciculata (Tineo) H.Baumann & Künkele
  • Dactylorhiza fasciculata (Tineo) Aver.
  • Dactylorhiza latifolia f. rubra (Winterl) D.Tyteca & Gathoye
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina f. chusae C.E.Hermos.
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina f. hybrida (W.Zimm.) Kümpel
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina f. robusta (Neuman) Soó
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina f. rubra (Winterl) Hyl.
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina f. rubrobracteata (Harz ex Schltdl., Langeth. & Schenk) Soó
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina lus. incarnata (Wahlenb.) Soó
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina subsp. laurentina (R.Bolós ex Vayr.) Malag.
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina var. hungarica (Soó) Soó
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina var. hybrida (W.Zimm.) Peitz
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina var. laurentina (R.Bolòs ex Vayr.) Soó
  • Dactylorhiza sambucina var. rubrobracteata (Harz) Soó
  • Orchis fasciculata Tineo
  • Orchis guffroyi P.Fourn.
  • Orchis incarnata Willd.
  • Orchis incarnata var. sambucina (L.) Lapeyr. ex Bubani
  • Orchis laurentina R.Bolòs ex Vayr.
  • Orchis lutea Dulac
  • Orchis maculata subsp. sambucina (L.) Bonnier & Layens
  • Orchis pseudosambucina var. fasciculata (Tineo) Rchb.f.
  • Orchis pseudosambucina var. fasciculata (Tineo) Nyman

and 37 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.