Paphiopedilum venustum
A Himalayan slipper orchid with leaves marbled dark and grey-green above and flushed purple beneath, and single flowers veined in green, pink and purple, usually in late winter and spring. It grows on the ground in shaded, humus-rich forest from eastern Nepal to north-east India and Bangladesh. In cultivation it wants low light, steady moisture, and a noticeably cooler, drier winter than summer.
Where it grows wild
It is terrestrial, rooting in leaf litter and humus on shaded forest floors and banks in the monsoon hill forests of the eastern Himalaya and the Assam-Meghalaya-Sylhet hills. Wikipedia notes that it does best warm and in low light.
Wild records with coordinates run from the Sikkim and Bhutan foothills up to about 29 °N in south-east Tibet, which suggests low to middle elevations. The literature usually gives roughly 100-1,500 m, but no specimen we saw gave an elevation.
🔒 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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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.