Spiranthes cernua
species of plant
Spiranthes cernua, commonly called nodding lady's tresses, or nodding ladies' tresses, is a species of orchid occurring from Maritime Canada to the eastern and southern United States. As the common name suggests cernua means "nodding", or "bowed" in Latin.
Description
Spiranthes cernua plants grow to 50 centimetres (20 in) tall. They have 1 to 5 narrow, basal, upright leaves, 2.6 centimetres (1.0 in) long and 2 centimetres (0.8 in) wide. The leaves are present during flowering but wilt afterwards. The white flowers are arranged in a spiral around the stem. Each flower is 6–12 millimetres (0.2–0.5 in) long and consists of 3 sepals and 3 petals, all curved forward to give the flower a long bell shape. Flowers are slightly to strongly nodding (hence the name), with older flowers usually nodding more than new ones. The dorsal sepal (the one at the top) is convex and recurved upwards towards the tip. The lip (bottom petal) curves strongly downwards towards its tip.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Spiranthes cernua” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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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 Feb 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1152261. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spiranthes cernua” 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.