White turtlehead grows in brushy marshes, stream banks, wet ditches, low meadows and swampy woods from Newfoundland and Labrador to Manitoba and south to Georgia. It is the main host plant on which the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly lays its eggs. In Quebec it is native.
The genus name Chelone is Greek for tortoise, a reference to the flower's resemblance to a turtle's head, and a Greek myth tells of a nymph named Chelone turned into a tortoise. DNA studies have placed the plant in the plantain family, Plantaginaceae, instead of the older figwort family.