About
The straggly pencil orchid has thin, wiry stems and pencil-like leaves, and grows on trees and rocks in eastern Australia and New Caledonia. Small greenish or brownish flowers have a conspicuous white lip.
Field notes
Morphology
Wiry, sparsely branched stems up to 60 cm long spread or hang, bearing cylindrical dark green leaves 5–15 cm long. Flowering stems 2–8 cm long carry up to four greenish-yellow to pale brown flowers about 2 cm wide with reddish streaks and a white three-lobed labellum.
Distribution & habitat
Drier rainforest and coastal scrub from Forty Mile Scrub National Park in Queensland to the Clarence River in New South Wales; also widespread in New Caledonia.
Ecology
Rarely hybridises with the cucumber orchid (Dendrobium cucumerinum) where the two grow together.
History & etymology
Described by George Bentham in 1873 in Flora Australiensis, apparently named after Edward Macarthur Bowman, who collected the type.
Habitat
- Altitude
- Not recorded
- Altitude class
- —
- Native to
- Australia, New Caledonia
Cultivation
- Difficulty
- Not recorded
Text adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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