Habenaria repensNutt.

Waterspider bog orchidwaterspider bog orchid

WFO wfo-0000978533 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Habenaria repens, photographed by Dan Johnson
fig. a Dan Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-29 / obs. 201663610

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
1031900
Filed as
Habenaria repens Nutt.
Det. by
G. F. J. Pabst 1976-01-01
Collected
G. G. Hatschbach 1975-02-18
Origin
BR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 43 botanical countries

Regions where Habenaria repens is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Argentina Northeast, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaLouisianaMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestMississippiNorth CarolinaOklahomaSouth CarolinaTexasArgentina NortheastBelizeBoliviaBrazil NorthBrazil NortheastBrazil SouthBrazil SoutheastBrazil West-CentralColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaGuyanaHaitiHondurasJamaicaNicaraguaPanamáParaguayPeruPuerto RicoSurinameTrinidad-TobagoUruguayVenezuela
Native distribution of Habenaria repens, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Belize BLZ
Bolivia BOL
Brazil North BZN
Brazil Northeast BZE
Brazil South BZS
Brazil Southeast BZL
Brazil West-Central BZC
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Guyana GUY
Haiti HAI
Honduras HON
Jamaica JAM
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Paraguay PAR
Peru PER
Puerto Rico PUE
Suriname SUR
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Uruguay URU
Venezuela VEN
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Louisiana LOU
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS
Mississippi MSI
North Carolina NCA
Oklahoma OKL
South Carolina SCA
Texas TEX

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 111 in flower of 140 examined

Proportion of examined Habenaria repens in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 14 15 93% 70% to 99%
Feb 5 8 63% 31% to 86%
Mar 4 6 67% 30% to 90%
Apr 1 2 too few examined
May 4 4 too few examined
Jun 5 7 71% 36% to 92%
Jul 10 11 91% 62% to 98%
Aug 13 16 81% 57% to 93%
Sep 19 22 86% 67% to 95%
Oct 14 18 78% 55% to 91%
Nov 12 15 80% 55% to 93%
Dec 10 16 63% 39% to 82%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Habenaria repens observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 111 of 140 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 805 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.5 °C 7.8 °C 15.5 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 29.6 °C 31.9 °C 33.6 °C
Annual rainfall 1,183 mm 1,389 mm 1,777 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 157 mm 243 mm 351 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 805 research-grade observations of Habenaria repens that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 13 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Habenaria maxillaris Lindl.
  • Habenaria nuttallii Small
  • Habenaria palustris Acuña
  • Habenaria paucifolia var. estolonifer M.N.Correa
  • Habenaria pseudorepens Schltr.
  • Habenaria radicans Griseb. ex C.Wright
  • Habenaria radicans Griseb.
  • Habenaria sceptrodes Rchb.f.
  • Mesicera repens (Nutt.) Raf.
  • Orchis repens (Nutt.) Alph.Wood
  • Orchis repens (Nutt.) Raf.
  • Platanthera foliosa Brongn.
  • Platanthera repens (Nutt.) Alph.Wood

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.