O. corsica
was the name first employed by J. F. Soleirol in the mid 19th century to describe a not uncommon yellow
Ophrys
growing on the island of Corsica. It then disappeared from the botanical map and although occasionally referred to by
several botanists, the species was not formally described until 2002 when G and
W Foelsche completed a paper in which they proposed, perhaps more accurately resurrected two long
forgotten species,
Ophrys corsica and
Orchis corsica.
Despite the paper's comprehensive description,
O. corsica
is a difficult species to identify in the field and this is further
complicated by considerable professional disagreement about several
aspects
of its existence IE :- distribution, morphology and the presence
or otherwise of similar taxons.
O. corsica
is known with certainty from Corsica and Sardinia and more dubiously
from the Provinces of Calabria, Lecce and Apulia on the Italian
mainland. In Sardinia it can be distinguished from
O. lepida by its considerably smaller size, whilst on both islands it is separable from
O. sicula by
the greater basal geniculation and the fact that the flowers are not
held horizontally to the stem. The major problem with identification
arises with the very similar
O. phryganae,
which is similarly small, similarly geniculated and held at a similar
angle. The professional disagreement mentioned earlier, is largely
centred on this species, some believing that they are one and the same,
whilst others do not accept the existence of
O. phryganae in the islands, regarding
O. corsica as a morphologically alike but separately evolved taxon.
Hybridization is a significant factor and in both Sardinia and Corsica,
plants of different sizes and intermediate characteristics are easily
found. Overall the current understanding of the
O. lutea group in both Sardinia and Corsica is unsatisfactory and would benefit from further research.