On the leafy floor of dry coniferous forests, this petit flower sends up a leafless flower stalk with a cylindrical cluster with 3–9 greenish-white to creamy, nodding flowers. Note the extended style usually is curved, and the leaves are pale, creamy green.

FLOWER: June–August. Leafless stem (scape) 4–10-inches tall with a  cylindrical cluster of 3–9 nodding, greenish-white to creamy flowers. The style usually bends upward.

LEAVES: Basal rosette, sometimes absent. Blades solid green, smooth, leathery, oval to broadly elliptic or rounded, 3/4–1 1/4-inches long (2–3 cm); margins entire to finely toothed. Stem (petiole) channeled, to 2 3/8-inches long.

HABITAT: Rocky, dry, leafy, conifer forest soils; stream sides, canyons, slopes, roadsides; ponderosa-Douglas fir, spruce-fir forests.

ELEVATION: 8,250–11,000 feet.

RANGE: AZ, CA, CO, ID, NM, NV, MT, OR, UT, WA, WY; eastward through Great Lake states to Maine, circumboreal.

SIMILAR SPECIES: White-vein Wintergreen, Pyrola picta, in much the same range, also has flowers all around the stem and curved styles, but the basal leaves are mottled with distinct white veins. Sidebells Wintergreen, Orthilia secunda, in the northern, central, and western mountains in NM, has clusters of bell-shaped flowers along one side the stem, and leaves on the lower 1/3 of the stem.

NM COUNTIES: NM northern and western mountains in high-elevation, dry habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Cibloa, Colfax, Grant, Los Alamos, McKinley, Mora, Rio Arriba, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Taos.