True to its name, a ghost orchid (Epipogium aphyllum Sw.) has "appeared" from nowhere, in a beech forest in the Gargano park. It is the first time this rare plant has been found in Puglia, a region characterised by rich biodiversity — the Gargano promontory alone is home to around ninety different species of orchid.

Why it is called the ghost orchid

This plant lives in places with a temperate and humid climate and owes its common name both to its elusiveness and to the delicate white flower that blooms in the summer months at the tip of its slender stem — so slender that it gives the impression that the flower is suspended in mid-air, just like a ghost. The ghost orchid can live for long periods underground, covered by a dense layer of humus made up of beech leaf litter from which it draws nourishment, and it emerges from the undergrowth to flower only when certain atmospheric conditions are present.

The discovery

The plant, approximately ten centimetres tall, was found by two botanists from San Giovanni Rotondo, Giovanni Russo and Luigi Palladino, in the beech forest of Monte Spigno, in the municipality of Monte Sant'Angelo. News of the discovery was published in Italian Botanist, the scientific journal of the Società botanica italiana.

A fragile and protected species

The ghost orchid is a species protected by Cites, the Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and its collection is strictly prohibited. The rarity of this plant, which also lives in the warm, humid forests of Florida and Cuba, is due precisely to its specific climatic and environmental requirements and also to the shortage of pollinating insects — moths equipped with a proboscis long enough to pollinate the orchid, which produces individual flowers in succession. Last year this botanical rarity was also found in Calabria, in the Sila park.