Satyrium hallackii subsp. ocellatum inflorescence

Satyrium hallackii subsp. ocellatum produces an inflorescence varying in the density of the flowers in the spike. The number of flowers produced ranges between sixty and several hundred.

The bracts among the flowers are sometimes only slightly to partly deflexed, becoming as long as or up to three times the length of the ovary. In the photo the well deflexed bracts are attractively coloured in shades of purple, pale green and grey. The bract margins bulge slightly in their midsections, their tips attenuating above these concave, deflexed sections.

The outer surface of the hood or lip over the flower centre is pale pink in the photo, while much of the visible inner surfaces of the other perianth segments below are white. The pair of lateral sepals spreading sideways are the biggest of these segments, the two narrow lateral petals flanking the odd sepal in the centre the smallest.

The curved spurs, two of them per flower, have the colour of the hood. S. hallackii subsp. ocellatum has longer spurs than subsp. hallackii and is pollinated by hawkmoths, the latter subspecies by carpenter bees; evolutionary divergence of the subspecies in this case possibly caused by differences in pollinators (Liltved and Johnson, 2012).