Most orchids - at least here in France - are perennial plants. They survive during the winter with tubercules in the soil. The Male Orchid (Orchis mascula) has two, one fresh and whitish, to nourish the plant this spring, and one greyish and wrinkled, a remnant from last season. During the coming season a new one will develop for 2012.
Since a few days, the first leaves have developed. In a month the plant will flower, and at the end of summer the newly formed seed has blown away, the leaves disappeared, and the plant has resumed its long sleep under the cover of fallen leaves.