Cleistes divaricata (L.) Ames 1921 Photo by Nicholas Plummer

Flowers in situ Lake Ramsay Preserve of The Nature Conservancy

Photos by Brian A. O'Brien Copyright ©

Common Name The Spreading Cleistes [refers to the flowers size]

Flower Size 4 1/2" [11.25 cm]

Found in the southeastern United States from New Jersy to Florida with eastern Kentucky and Tennesee to the west in pine barrens, bogs, savannahs, swamps, and damp meadows along streams at elevations of sea level to 1300 meters as a small to large sized, cold growing terrestrial with slender, green, purplish below, terete stem carrying a solitary, ascending, green, fleshy, glaucous, ovate to lanceolate leaf borne above the middle of the stem that blooms in the spring on a terminal, single flowered inflorescence with a leaflike, lanceolate, longer than the ovary floral bract and carrying a large, fragrant single flower

Synonyms *Arethusa divaricata L. 1753; Cleistes divaricata f. leucantha P.M.Br. 1995; Cleistesiopsis divaricata (L.) Pansarin & F.Barros 2008 publ. 2009; Cleistesiopsis divaricata f. leucantha (P.M.Br.) P.M.Br. 2009; Pogonia divaricata (L.) R. Br. 1813

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Die Orchideen Schlechter 1915 as Pogonia divaricata; Encyclopedia of Cultivated Orchids Hawkes 1965; The Native Orchids of Florida Luer 1972 photos fide; The Native Orchids of the United States and Canada Luer 1975 drawing/photos fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 48 No 6 1979 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 56 No 1 1987 stamp fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 56 No 5 1987 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 60 No 4/338 1991 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 68 No 5 1999 photo fide; Genera Orchidacearum Vol 3 Orchidioideae Part 2 Vanilliodeae Pridgeon, Cribb, Chase and Rasmusen 2003 photo fide; AOS Bulletin vol 78 No 8 2009 as Cleistesiopsis divaricata photo fide;

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