Spiranthes cernua(L.) Rich.

nodding ladies' tresses

WFO wfo-0000313138 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Spiranthes cernua, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. a Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-18 / obs. 164296690
Spiranthes cernua, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. b Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164300960
Spiranthes cernua, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. c Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164296998
Spiranthes cernua, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. d Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164297627
Spiranthes cernua, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. e Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164302250
Spiranthes cernua, photographed by Ian Manning
fig. f Ian Manning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 155980647
Spiranthes cernua, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. g Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 154434921
Spiranthes cernua, photographed by Elias
fig. h Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 101969928

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 429 observations

Peak flowering in Oct, from 429 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 17 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Gyrostachys cernua (L.) Kuntze
  • Gyrostachys constricta Small
  • Ibidium cernuum (L.) House
  • Ibidium cernuum Bouse
  • Limodorum autumnale Walter
  • Neottia cernua (L.) Sw.
  • Neottia cernuua (L.) Willd.
  • Ophrys cernua L.
  • Spiranthes annua Lesq.
  • Spiranthes annua Lesq. ex Branner & Coville
  • Spiranthes cernua var. cernua
  • Spiranthes cernua var. ochroleuca Ames
  • Spiranthes constricta (Small) K.Schum.
  • Spiranthes parksii Correll
  • Spiranthes petiolaris Raf.
  • Triorchis cernuus (L.) Nieuwl.
  • Triorchos cernuus (L.) Nieuwl.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.