Spiranthes romanzoffiana Cham. & Schltdl.

This herbarium sheet from the Natural History Museum, London preserves three pressed specimens of Irish Lady's-tresses (Spiranthes romanzoffiana), a rare terrestrial orchid native to Ireland and North America. The distinctive spiral flower spikes — still faintly greenish on the largest central specimen — show the tight, twisted inflorescence that gives the genus its name. Collected near Castletown Bearhaven, County Cork, by A.J. Wilmott in 1926, this sheet documents one of Britain and Ireland's most geographically puzzling orchids: its disjunct transatlantic distribution remains a subject of botanical debate. Herbarium specimens like this one form the physical foundation of taxonomic science, anchoring species names to verifiable physical evidence across generations of researchers.