Small Whorled Pogonia

Isotria medeoloides is a rhizomatous herb producing a waxy gray-green stem up to about 25 centimeters tall. The gray-green leaves are up to 8.5 centimeters long by 4 wide and are borne in a characteristic whorl. The flower has green and green-streaked yellowish petals measuring between 1 and 2 centimeters long.

The orchid's range is from southern Maine south to Georgia and west to southern Ontario, Michigan, and Tennessee. A population was found in Missouri in 1897, but the plant is no longer believed extant there. It has always been considered a rare species, often legendarily so. It has been called "the rarest orchid east of the Mississippi", and findings of it are covered by the media, such as the one found in Vermont in 2022. The plant's habitat includes hardwood and conifer-hardwood forests, where it is found in leaf litter along small "braided" intermittent streams. Its native range includes the Appalachian Mountains and Great Lakes region.