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Smooth Tongue Orchid
Dendrobium rigidum
Dendrobium rigidum, commonly known as the smooth tongue orchid or smooth tick orchid, is a species of orchid native to tropical North Queensland and to New Guinea. It is an epiphytic or lithophytic orchid with wiry, hanging stems, fleshy, dark green leaves and flowering stems with between two and seven crowded, cream-coloured, star-shaped flowers often with pink or red on the back. It grows on trees, shrubs and rocks in a paperbark swamps and rainforest.
From the article Dendrobium rigidum on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
Dendrobium rigidum is an epiphytic or lithophytic herb with wiry, hanging stems 20–30 mm (0.8–1 in) long and about 3 mm (0.12 in) wide. The leaves are egg-shaped, smooth and fleshy, dark green, 30–60 mm (1–2 in) long and about 15 mm (0.59 in) wide. The flowering stem emerges from near a leaf base and is 10–30 mm (0.4–1 in) long. There are between two and seven cream-coloured flowers 9–12 mm (0.35–0.47 in) long, 12–15 mm (0.47–0.59 in) wide with the sepals and petals spreading apart with their bases overlapping. The sepals are 7–9 mm (0.28–0.35 in) long, about 4.5 mm (0.18 in) wide and the petals are a similar length but less than half as wide. The labellum is curved, about 10 mm (0.4 in) long and 7 mm (0.3 in) wide with red or orange markings. Flowering occurs sporadically throughout the year.
Range & habitat
The smooth tongue orchid grows on trees, shrubs and sometimes on rocks in mangroves, paperbark swamps and rainforest in New Guinea, on some Torres Strait Islands and on the Cape York Peninsula as far south as the Russell River.
== References ==
Wikipedia: “Distribution and habitat”
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Dendrobium rigidum in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 490102.