Bog Orchids or Rein-orchids are hairless perennials of usually wet areas, often with fleshy or tuberous roots. The leaves are basal and usually also several to numerous and reduced upward on the stem, mostly with a sheathing base. There are few to many flowers arranged in loose to greatly congested, bracted spikes or spikelike elongated clusters, colored white to yellowish-green or green, often purplish-tinged. The upper sepal is usually erect or concave and more or less hooded, often touching with the upper petals. The side sepals are spreading to somewhat bent backward. The lip is pendent to upcurved, entire to lobed at the tip or toward the base, or even fringed. The reproductive column is rather short, the two pollen sacs well separated by the broad connective tissue. The pollen of each anther sac is structured from powdery and loosely held together to tightly massed in 2 pollen-sacs, with a short stalk ending in an exposed, round to oblong sticky pollen-collecting substance. The stigma is sideways elongate and concave. The spur is well developed, from strongly pouched to club-shaped or narrowly cylindric, straight to strongly curved, half as long to at least twice as long as the lip, usually somewhat translucent near the base and serving to illuminate the orifice. The genus has about 500 species of temperate to tropical regions, and is widely distributed. It was formerly named Habenaria, which name comes from the Latin habena, reins - a narrow strap, in reference to the narrow lip of some of the species.
Guide to Identify Presented Species of Genus Platanthera
LEAVES FEW TO SEVERAL ON STEM
P. dilatata – White Bog Orchid Flowers are very fragrant, mostly white, with an upper hood, 2 wings and a lower
lip which is expanded at its base, and a slender, curved spur.
Flowers are growing in long, spike-like clusters.
P. hyperborea – Northern Green Bog Orchid Flowers are unscented, white to yellowish-white or greenish, with an upper hood, 2 wings and a lower lip and a slender, curved spur. Flowers are growing in long, spike-like clusters.
