half of the fruit capsules produce seeds. The very fine seeds are dispersed by the wind in October or November. Nevertheless, most seeds will not disperse more than a few dm from the mother plant since the vast majority of new plants are in close vicinity to an adult plant. Autumn lady's tresses spreads primarily through sexual reproduction. However, the plants to a limited extent also propagate vegetatively by the formation of side buds on the underground stem. The new plant forms its own tuber and leaf rosette, and if the old root dies, the connection between the two daughter plants is broken. The plants therefore often occur in small dense groups. An individual plant does not usually flower every year, apparently because the production of seeds takes a lot of effort. Plants do not necessarily appear above ground each year, so that after an absence mature plants suddenly seem to appear out of nowhere. Differences from other species The genus Spiranthes contains about forty species, most of which are from North America. Some species are found in Central and South America, in temperate and tropical Asia southward to Australia and New Zealand. In Europe, three species occur in the wild. Besides the autumn lady's tresses, these are the summer lady's tresses S. aestivalis, and the Irish lady's tresses S. romanzoffiana, a mainly North American species that also occurs in Ireland and western Scotland. The autumn lady's tresses is easily distinguished because the two other species have inflorescences that occur earlier during the year (May–July) from a living rosette, with lanceolate leaves rising at an angle and having cream-colored instead of greenish or greyish white flowers. The autumn lady's tresses also resembles the evergreen Goodyera repens (creeping lady's-tresses or dwarf rattlesnake plantain), which has a creeping rhizome rather than tubers. In G. repens the inflorescence emerges from the centre of a rosette of ovate leaves with a pointed tip, and has striking perpendicular connective veins. The flowers are covered in long hairs that are often tipped with tiny droplets. Taxonomy In 1753, Carl Linnaeus was the first to correctly describe the species in his Species Plantarum, naming it Ophrys spiralis. In 1827, François Fulgis Chevallier moved it to the genus Spiranthes that had been erected by Louis Claude Richard in 1817. Synonyms include O. autumnalis, Epipactis spiralis, Serapias spiralis, Neottia spiralis, N. autumnalis, Ibidium spirale, Gyrostachys autumnalis, Spiranthes autumnalis and