Authors: L.
Usually 10-20cm in height, sometimes up to 30cm Leaves linear to narrowly lanceolate, 5-20cm long, channelled and with minutely toothed margins. Flowers blackish-crimson (rarely white, red or yellowish), up to 1cm in diameter, the tepals lanceolate, slender pointed, the lip narrowly triangular, in dense conical spikes, mid to late summer. Alpine meadows, from northern Spain to Greece and Norway. N.n. subsp. rubra (syn. N. rubra, N. miniata, N. suaveolens) has red to pink flowers with broader blunt tepals and an equally blunt broadly triangular lip, borne in more or less cylindrical spikes about two weeks earlier. It has been suggested that this arose as a hybrid with a Gymnadenia. Central and eastern Alps and mountains of Romania only. N.n. subsp. corneliana is rather similar but has white pink-tinted flowers in conical spikes.
