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Great Plains lady's tresses

Spiranthes magnicamporum

Also called Great Plains Ladies' Tresses, Prairie Ladies' Tresses

Great Plains lady's tresses
Photo: Eric Hunt, CC BY-SA 4.0

Great Plains lady's tresses is a native North American terrestrial orchid that grows in prairies and fens, producing a spiral of fragrant white flowers in fall. It is a wild species rather than a common garden plant, so it is best grown from protected native-plant sources and kept in moist, calcareous, open-grassland conditions.

Family
Orchidaceae (Orchid family)
Grows as
Orchid
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Keep the soil consistently moist during the growing season, but not waterlogged.
Soil
Calcareous, moist, well-drained loam or fen-type soil
Temperature
Hardy in cold winters; tolerates temperate climates from southern Canada southward
How easy
Hard
Safety
Not known to be toxic
Native range
S. Canada to C. & EC. U.S.A.
Climate
temperate

About

Spiranthes magnicamporum, commonly called the Great Plains lady's tresses, is a species of orchid that is native to North America. It is primarily native in the Great Plains, but there are outlying populations in the east in areas of former natural grassland, such as the Black Belt prairies of the Southeast. It is found in both fens and wet and dry prairies, often in calcareous soil.

Where it grows

The Lady's Tresses occurs mostly in the United States of America and part of Canada.

Other Spiranthes plants

Summer lady's-tresses · Appalachian ladies' tresses · Spiranthes australis · Atlantic Ladies' Tresses · Texas lady's tresses · Case's lady's tresses · Nodding lady's tresses · Reclusive lady's tresses · Ute lady's tresses · Eaton's lady's tresses · Canelo lady's tresses · Fire Ladies' Tresses

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Spiranthes magnicamporum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

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