Spring Ladies' Tresses

Spring ladies’ tresses, Spiranthes vernalis, is a widespread ground orchid that bears flowers on a spiral-shaped stalk. It takes to a variety of habitats, including possibly your lawn.

It’s found throughout the eastern and central United States as far north as New Hampshire and Michigan, west over to South Dakota, down to Texas and Florida. The Bahamas and Mexico are also part of its range. It is a Florida native, but a rare one in this end of the Peninsula, according to the Institute for Regional Conservation.

Spring ladies’ tresses has been found in almost all of the state’s 67 counties with the notable exceptions of Broward and Monroe.

In most of its extensive range, spring ladies’ tresses lives up to its name, blooming with spring’s warm breezes. In South Florida, however, spring comes a little early, January early. It continues to bloom through summer and into the fall throughout its range.

Some basics: It is short and nondescript when not in bloom, with four or five leaves at its base, shooting up four to six inches off the ground. When in bloom, however, it can be as tall as two feet. We’ve encountered spring ladies’ tresses in Allapattah Flats Wildlife Management Area and Jonathan Dickinson State Park, and in both places the plants we saw were well short of a foot tall.

It can be widely variable in its looks. As noted above, the spiral-shaped flower stalk. Each full spiral turn can have three to seven flowers each; the spirals can be tight or relatively loose. The flowers are cream-colored.

The flower stalk, or rachis as it’s called botanically, is covered with fine hairs or trichomes. The hairs come to a sharp point at the end, and that characteristic is the tell that separates it from other members of its genus.

Habitats where spring ladies’ tresses are found include pinelands, swamps, marshes, roadsides, meadow, prairies, hollows of beach dunes — and lawns.

It is cultivated and sometimes available for sale at native nurseries, but mainly used to restorations and natural landscapes.

Spring ladies’ tresses is a perennial.

Spring ladies’s tresses is one of 18 members of Spiranthes found in the southern end of the Peninsula, according to the Institute for Regional Conservation. All sport a variation of a spiral-shaped flower stalk.

Spring ladies’ tresses is a member of Orchidaceae, the orchid family.
Allapattah Flats Wildlife Management Area