Cephalanthera rubra

Red Helleborine (Cephalanthera rubra) is an orchid found in Europe, north Africa and parts of Asia. Although reasonably common in parts of its range, this helleborine has always been one of the rarest orchids in Britain.

Distribution and habitat

The Red Helleborine is found throughout most of Europe, east to the Urals and as far as 60 degrees north. It is however rare in Britain, the Low Countries and western France. It also occurs in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and in various parts of southern Asia as far east as Iran.^[1]

Red Helleborine is a very rare plant in Britain. It is found only at the following sites:

• Workman's Wood, Sheepscombe, Gloucestershire^[2][3][4]
• Waterfront Business Park, Fleet, Hampshire,
• Hawkley Warren, Hampshire,^[2] where it was first found in 1986.^[5]
• Windsor Hill SSSI, a woodland just to the east of Princes Risborough in the Chilterns, Buckinghamshire^[2][6]

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the species was recorded from single sites in Somerset, Sussex and Kent, and a second Hampshire site (in the upper Test Valley). The species was also recorded at additional Gloucestershire sites (including Stanley Wood, King's Stanley, now a Woodland Trust woodland), and persisted at some of these into the 1970s.

Notes

External links

• Species page from Britain's Orchids
• Species page from the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew
• Images of Red Helleborine from ARKive
• Distribution map