Dendrobium christyanum
A small, endangered Dendrobium (synonyms D. margaritaceum and D. sinense) from Hainan and nearby mainland Southeast Asia, with short, dark-hairy canes and white flowers with a red-marked lip. It is famous for luring its pollinator, the hornet Vespa bicolor, with a scent that mimics a honeybee alarm pheromone. In cultivation it behaves like other small hairy-caned Dendrobiums: bright, humid, airy, mounted, with a cooler, drier winter.
Where it grows wild
Epiphytic on trunks and branches of trees in montane evergreen forest, often mossy, in a monsoon climate with a wet summer and cool, drier winter.
Montane forest; published elevations are not available to us here, and our data file had no usable wild records. Hainan montane forest and the northern Indochinese uplands where it is recorded are mostly around 800–1,700 m, so plan for intermediate to cool conditions.
🔒 Growing it like that
The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
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More Dendrobium
Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used under its CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, unmodified.