What would you call this weird Dactylorhiza fuchsii?

[krismunk]

I found this odd Dactylorhiza fuchsii in Triglav National Park in Slovenia a couple of weeks ago, at app. 1200 m.

It was a single specimen among lots of regular fuchsii.

What would you call this?

var. rhodochila has been suggested to me but the colouration of the leaves is completely wrong.

To quote a couple of sites:

"...dark purple leaves that were blotched pale green"

"...The leaves are heavily spotted and suffused with the same colour as the flowers producing a brownish-bronze coloration."

By contrast, the leaves on this were a completely unspotted bright green.

...and how uncommon is such a specimen?

[estación seca]

Welcome to the Orchid Board!

Botanists seldom use color of flowers and leaves to differentiate species. Flower part shape, arrangement and size are important. Unless somebody is familiar with those plants, you would have to take photos and measurements, and compare them to descriptions of known species.

But it must have been wonderful to see!

[Optimist]

I am thinking that human-selection of those varieties that are "different" is the way that new cultivars are formed. I'm not a biologist here, but white rats and mice occur "naturally" and often die early in the wild because they are less camouflaged than their siblings. When people started picking out the white ones and breeding them to get more white genes expressed, then the white "lab mouse" type was created. This would be similar, a flower that is expressing some other color is probably natural, but rare, and it would take someone deliberately cross breeding the pollen from one to the other to see if a population could occur.

[brianwstephens]

These are beautiful! They remind me of the wild sweetpeas that we have growing in Northern California.