Tipularia discolor(Pursh) Nutt.

crane-fly orchid

WFO wfo-0000325446 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Tipularia discolor, photographed by Scott Morris
fig. a Scott Morris, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 193414467
Tipularia discolor, photographed by Bonnie Semmling
fig. b Bonnie Semmling, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197371184
Tipularia discolor, photographed by Annie Weissman
fig. c Annie Weissman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197324182
Tipularia discolor, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. d Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191022598
Tipularia discolor, photographed by Bruce Slater
fig. e Bruce Slater, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192440525
Tipularia discolor, photographed by Leila Dasher
fig. f Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191214803
Tipularia discolor, photographed by Elizabeth Axley
fig. g Elizabeth Axley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189343878
Tipularia discolor, photographed by Mac Post
fig. h Mac Post, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192236405

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 = 1,612 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 1,612 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 5 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.

  • Limodorum unifolium Muhl.
  • Limodorum unifolium Muhl. ex Nutt.
  • Orchis discolor Pursh
  • Plectrurus discolor (Pursh) Raf.
  • Tipularia unifolia Britton, Sterns & Poggenb.

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.