Spicate Aplectrum

Family: Orchids. Occurs in moist forests and swampy places in the temperate zone of North America.

Plants up to 60 cm tall. Tuber large (about 5 cm in diameter), with a thin stolon at the end of which is a young tuber. Stem with a few scale-like sheaths. Leaf single, basal, ovate or elliptic, 5-18 cm long, with a petiole, green, acute, directed upward, appearing by autumn and overwintering. Inflorescence racemose, 5-10 cm tall, of 4-16 flowers. Flowers about 2.5 cm long, yellowish-brown; sepals and petals narrow, linear-lanceolate, 1.2-1.5 cm long; lip without a spur and without a saccate appendage, three-lobed, undulate, bent. Column free; anther at its apex. Pollinia 4, they are oblique. Flowers in late spring to early summer.