1 Orchid observations in Croatia in 201 6 Frank Verhart, Maastricht , the Nether lands
[email protected] I ntroduction and general remarks As in 2014/2015 I visited Croatia for observation of wild orchids. In 2016 I went to Croatia twice. From 14 april until 1 May I was on the Southern Dalmatian peninsula Pelješac and from 11 until 30 June I explored the area between the Plitvice National Park and the city of Karlovac in the counties Lika - Senj and Karlovac. As always I did observations o f wild orchids on locations often not registered in the Flora Croatica Database (FCD) , a project of the Department of Botany of the University of Zagreb . At Pelješac interesting observations I did include those of Cephalanthera damasonium and Orchis ustula ta , as both have not been reported before from the peninsula. I found Epipactis microphylla , Ophrys bombyliflora and Serapias ionica , all of which have been recorded very rarely from Pelješac in the past. The visit to the inland of Croatia in June also yie lded observations of Epipactis microphylla , however by far the most frequently seen orchid species was Orchis ustulata of which a great many locations were recorded, many of those new. In the next chapters I present the results of these visits. Distrib ution maps The distribution maps in this article were taken from the Flora Croatica Database (FCD, Nikolić 2016 ) . The units of distribution are based on MTB, a current standard for mapping flora in Croatia. MTB is an abbreviation of the German “ “Meßtischblätter” , which means topographic map and corresponds with 10 degrees longitude and 6 degrees latitude grid.