Phalaenopsis pulcherrima
Formerly Doritis pulcherrima, this is the odd one out among moth orchids: an upright plant that grows on bare sandstone, thin soil and wet rocks in open, often seasonally dry forest from Assam and Hainan to Sumatra and Borneo. It takes far more light than other Phalaenopsis and goes through a sharp, cool, near-rainless winter. Upright spikes of small pink to purple flowers appear in summer and autumn.
Where it grows wild
Specimen labels describe it on bare sandstone outcrops on plateaus, in thin soil on very exposed open places, scattered in scrub on stony ground in open dry deciduous dipterocarp forest, on the ground in mixed deciduous forest, in open Melaleuca forest on sandy soil, and on moist rocks beside waterfalls. It is recorded as both lithophytic and terrestrial, and occasionally epiphytic.
Mostly lowland to lower hills; labelled records range from about 175 m to 800 m. Few records carry an elevation.
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The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
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More Phalaenopsis
Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app.