Can be confused with : Autumn Lady's-Tresses but than has smaller flowers and usually a longer spike of flowers.

The flowers smell of Hawthorn blossom.

Grows in damp meadows near lakes and rivers amidst grass or on old lazy-beds. [ Lazy-beds are a largely extinct way of growing vegetables not un-like furrows or strip-farming. They are of Celtic origin and are long linear raised beds of peat about 2.5metres wide with drainage chanels between which were used to cultivate potatoes. Nowadays found mainly in Ireland, the west of Scotland until the 19th Century and in southern parts of England after the Romans had gone]. It associates with Sphagnum Mosses and Marsh Clubmoss.

Found only in the north or west of Ireland, and in the far west of Scotland. Found only once in England, in 1957 in Devon, but is surprisingly able to reappear after many decades of absence. Reappearance seems associated with trampling of earth by cattle. .