Platanthera integra

Plants 20-75 cm. Leaves 1-3, ascending to spreading, rather abruptly or gradually reduced to bracts distally; blade lance-oblong to linear-lanceolate, 4.5-32 × 1-3 cm. Spikes dense. Flowers resupinate, showy, pale yellow-orange to pale orange; dorsal sepal entire or rarely apically dentate; lateral sepals spreading; petals elliptic to linear-oblong, margins entire; lip descending, ovate-elliptic to obovate or oblong, 3-5 × 1.5-4 mm, margins eroded to lacerate or rarely entire, with basal pair of fleshy ridges on adaxial surface; spur tapering from broad base to slender tube, 5-10 mm; rostellum lobes curved downward, short, rounded; pollinaria essentially straight; large pollinia protruding forward; viscidia orbiculate to suborbiculate; ovary slender to somewhat stout, 5-11 mm.

Flowering Jul--Sep. Wet pine barrens, peaty depressions in pine savannas, wet sandy woods; 0--900 m; Ala., Del., Fla., Ga., La., Miss., N.J., N.C., S.C., Tenn., Tex.

As in Platanthera clavellata and P. nivea, the column of P. integra bears two pairs of lateral processes. In P. integra, the distal structures are essentially sessile and cushionlike, as in P. nivea, but the proximal are short, stout, clublike, and bear several stout horns. The tuberoids of P. integra are abruptly swollen into oblong-cylinders, somewhat like those of P. nivea. These three species evidently form a group apart from Platanthera. See note under 30. P. nivea.

Slender, 3-6 dm; foliage lf 1(2) narrowly lance-linear, folded, recurved, to 25 cm, the second much smaller; upper lvs several, erect, much reduced and bract-like; infl ovoid or cylindric, dense, 3-9 נ2.5 cm; bracts lance-linear, even the lowest shorter than the ovary; fls golden-yellow, divergent; lip ovate, 5 mm, crenulate or erose; spur 4-8 mm, tapering to the tip; pollen-sacs adjacent and parallel, the viscid ends of the caudicles of the pollinia adjacent and immediately above the orifice to the nectary. Open acid bogs and pine-barrens on the coastal plain; s. N.J. and Del. to Fla. and Tex., n. in the interior to Tenn. (Gymnadeniopsis i.; Platanthera i.)

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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