While travelling in Attica, Greece, Marco Klüber photographed this special Ophrys helenae which demonstrates the bilateral symmetry of orchid flowers. The left half of the lip shows the regular red-brown coloring while the right half is hypochrome, with a partial loss of pigments. The lighter red hues are preserved, in addition to the chlorophyll in the lower edges.
Orchid flowers have a bilateral symmetry – as it’s the case with beetles or the human face elsewhere in nature. Other plants like the flowers of liliaceae have a radial symmetry with three or more mirror lines.
On his trip Marco also saw the albiflora form of Anacamptis papilionacea subsp. messenica (formerly subsp. heroica):
