Small, erect plant, 4 inches to 2 feet tall. Leaves small, egg-shaped, all at base of flowerstalk, sometimes absent at flowering time. Flowers spiraling around a long green stalk. Each flower small, white, tubular, with a frilly lower lip that is marked with green.

A native orchid of open, sunny spaces. Very occasional in Wildwood, in meadows.

The tubular, lipped two-tone flowers in a spiral will serve to tell this plant from anything else but another species of ladies' tresses. There are a number of other species, differing in flower shape and arrangement and leaf shape, but none have yet been found in the Park.