Platanthera cristata (Michx.) Lindl. 1835 Photos by Jim Fowler and his P-Base Orchid North American Orchid Website

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Plummer

Plant Ensitu Photo courtesy of Zachary Bradford

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Common Name or Meaning The Combed Platanthera - The Yellow Crested Orchid

Flower Size .2 to .3" [5 to 7 mm]

Found in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas in open wet measdows, roadside ditches and seeps and pinewoods as a large sized, cold growing terrestrial with 2 to 4 cauline, lanceolate leaves that are rapidly reduced to bracts towards the inflorescence that blooms in the late spring through late fall on a terminal, erect, racemose, to 32" [to 80 cm] long, loosely to densely, 30 to 80 flowered inflorescence

Synonyms Blephariglottis cristata (Michx.) Raf. 1836; Habenaria cristata (Michx.) R. Br. 1813; *Orchis cristata Michx. 1803; Platanthera cristata f. straminea P.M.Br. 1995

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Field Guide to the Orchids of North America Williams 1983; Schlechteriana Vol 4 No 4 1993; Wild Orchids of the SE USA P M Brown 2004; AOS Bulletin Vol 73 No 7 2004 photo;