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Similar Species: Spiranthes romanzoffiana has deeply constricted, fiddle-shaped lip <br />petals, sepals fused for at least 1/2 their length into a hood-like tube, pubescence of <br />short hairs along the stem and inflorescence, and typically occurs in montane <br />wetlands (up to 3400 meters in elevation) throughout the Rocky Mountains. S. <br />magnicamporum and S. cernua have strap-shaped, wavy-margined lip petals, lack <br />leaves at flowering time, and occur in low-elevation (to 1900 meters) wetlands of <br />the Great Plains east of the current known range of S. diluvialis (except in <br />Nebraska). S. porrifolia has pale yellow flowers with sepals fused for about 1/2 <br />their length (but not forming a hood), strap-shaped lip petals with peg-like hairs <br />on the upper surface, and glabrous stems. It occurs primarily along the Pacific <br />Coast inland to Idaho and western Nevada in wetlands from 100-2600 in. S. <br />infernalis has yellowish-white flowers with a green lip that is widest near the <br />middle before tapering to the base and is endemic to the Ash Meadows of <br />southern Nevada (Sheviak 1989, 1990, Sheviak and Brown 2002). <br />Geographic Range: When it was first listed under the Endangered Species Act in <br />1992, Spiranthes diluvialis was known only from north-central Colorado, <br />northern and south-central Utah, and southeastern Nevada (Figure 3). Since 1993, <br />Ute ladies'-tresses has been discovered in southeastern Wyoming (Hartman and <br />Nelson 1994), southwestern Montana (Heidel 1996), western Nebraska (Hazlett <br />1996), eastern Idaho (Moseley 1997), and north-central Washington (Bjork 1997) <br />and new populations have been documented in northwestern Colorado (Ward and <br />Naumann 1998) and northern Utah (Franklin 1993, Stone 1993) (Figure 4). In <br />this same time period, the number of TNC ecoregions* inhabited by Ute ladies'- <br />tresses has increased from six (Central Shortgrass Prairie, Colorado Plateau, Great <br />Basin, Southern Rocky Mountains, Utah-Wyoming Rocky Mountains, and <br />Wyoming Basins) to ten with the addition of the Columbia Plateau, Middle <br />Rockies-Blue Mountains, Northern Great Plains, and Okanogan ecoregions <br />(Figure 5). The number of occupied watersheds has also increased from 15 in <br />1991 to 38 today. <br />The location of extant and historical Ute ladies'-tresses populations by state, <br />county, ecoregion, and watershed is summarized in Table 1 and by state below: <br />Colorado: Prior to 1992, extant populations of Ute ladies'-tresses were known <br />only from Jefferson and Boulder counties along Clear, Boulder, and South <br />Boulder creeks within the Clear and St. Vrain watersheds (Figure 3, Table 1). <br />Historical (and presumed extirpated) occurrences were also known from Weld <br />and El Paso counties (Jennings 1989) in the Middle South Platte-Cherry Creek <br />and Fountain watersheds. Since 1992, additional populations (Figure 4) have <br />been recorded from St. Vrain and Left Hand creeks in Boulder County (St. Vrain <br />*Ecoregions are biologically-defined geographic units that share comparable climate, topography, and <br />vegetation. Several ecoregional classifications have been proposed for North America, most of which <br />differ in minor details. For this report, we have adopted the classification of The Nature Conservancy <br />• (Stein et al. 2000).