Spiranthes cernua, jersey coast

[cmu]

Ty! Yes much of the central ny former cernua are now arcisepila and incurva. I initially avoided trying to ID the non casei or ochroleuca spiranthes because of recurring headaches and knowing there are a lot of mixed traits in places, but friends matt young and mike Hough have been doing a lot of fieldwork and have seen what is supposed to be incurva and arcisepila and showed me how to have a decent idea. They’ve also been doing dna checking and concur that there are mixed traits between the two. I’ve sent samples of different things and when I’ve thought it was cernua or arcisepila the testing agreed. But some of the spots had already been tested and confirmed that many of the former odorata up here were cernua so it was ‘easier’ . I’ve found arcisepila in nj in mid to lower places, so extending the known range of it further south than the paper has initially indicated. Not sure if mike posted these to inat for me or not...

[cmu]

Sorry duplicate post

[isurus79]

Originally Posted by neophyte

From what I've read/seen, Spiranthes praecox has a white labellum with thin green lines extending outwards, kind of like a firework, and its flowers are sort of more tubular/linear; Spiranthes odorata has a faint to strong yellow-green wash on its lip – if that helps. The Spiranthes cernua complex (which does not include the above species) has recently gone under some major revision, making identification even more difficult than it already is, and a lot of the cryptic species have enormous variation/overlaps in morphology and can really only be reliably identified through DNA sequencing. Still, I'm sure it's fun to find and (try to) identify them!

Here's a link to the recently published (long/convoluted) paper: paper.

Yep, they reiterate that S. parksii isn’t a valid species. Therefore, it shouldn’t be federally protected.

[cmu]

Update: with new taxonomic work being published and my posting pics to inat, it’s been decided that these orchids are the newly described Spiranthes bightensis, which is present purportedly on the coastal plain from Long Island to delaware. So not a cernua

[isurus79]

Very cool!