Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Goodyera pubescens (Willd.) R. Br.
- Family: Orchid (Orchidaceae)
- Flowering: July-September
- Field Marks: This orchid is distinguished by its green-and-white mottled leaves, its densely flowered racemes, and its blunt-tipped lip of the flower.
- Habitat: Woods.
- Habit: Perennial herb from a creeping rhizome and fleshy roots.
- Stems: Upright, unbranched, up to 1 1/2 feet tall, densely glandular-hairy, bearing a raceme of flowers and 5-10 scales, but no broad leaves.
- Leaves: All basal, ovate-lanceolate to ovate, more or less pointed at the tip, rounded or tapering to the base, dark green but mottled with a network of white veins, up to 1 1/4 inches long.
- Flowers: Several borne in a densely crowded, terminal raceme up to 4 inches long; each flower greenish white, up to 1/3 inch long, short-stalked or sessile.
- Sepals: 3, greenish white, ovate, the two lateral ones free, the third one united to the petals forming a hood over the lip petal, up to 1/3 inch long.
- Petals: 3, greenish white, united to one of the sepals to form a hood over the lip petal, up to 1/3 inch long; lip petal rounded at the tip.
- Stamens: 1.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior, finely hairy.
- Fruits: Capsules ellipsoid, up to 1/2 inch long; seeds numerous, minute.
Previous Species -- Broad Water-weed (Elodea canadensis)
Return to Species List -- Group 4
Next Species -- Kidney-leaf Mud-plantain (Heteranthera reniformis)
