Goodyera repens
species of plant
Goodyera repens, a small forest orchid in the genus Goodyera. It is known by the common name creeping lady's-tresses in Anglophone Europe and dwarf rattlesnake plantain or lesser rattlesnake plantain in North America.
Description
G. repens is a small, perennial orchid that emerges from short, shallow-rooted rhizomes.
The evergreen basal leaves are either widely or narrowly egg-shaped, with either a narrow or blunt point at the tip. They are 1.1 to 3.2 cm (0.4–1.3 in) long and 0.5 to 1.8 cm (0.2–0.7 in) wide. Each plant will have at least two leaves, but can have as many as six. Many plants in North America will have silvery white or greenish white tissue around the lateral veins, but in some populations especially in Europe and Asia these markings are faint or missing. Scale-like leaves are arranged alternately on the pubescent stem.
The inflorescence is a spike reaching 10–20 cm tall, with 7-36 small white or pale-green flowers arranged closely on one side of the raceme. The individual flowers have a concave, pouch-like labellum, and a curved hood-like petal over the column formed by the dorsal sepal and petals.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Goodyera repens” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q157890. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
A general summary may omit uncertainty, sample limits or methodological disagreement that is explicit in the technical record. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Goodyera repens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.