Photo: Maja Dumat from Deutschland (Germany), via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 2.0. Unmodified apart from resizing.
Colour
pink, purple, white
Region
Japan and temperate East Asia, Singapore and tropical Asia
Season
winter, spring
Shape
cluster
Identification
A sympodial epiphytic or lithophytic orchid with fleshy upright jointed stems like gold hairpins, hence the Chinese golden-hairpin dendrobium; when one stem stops growing a new shoot rises from the base, forming a clump. Strap leaves, persistent. Flowers from the nodes in short racemes of two to four along the stem; waxy, fragrant and highly variable in colour from white to pink and purple, with a deep purple blotch at the base of the lip. One of the most widely grown ornamental orchids and the source of the traditional medicine shihu; the state flower of Sikkim.
Habitat
Evergreen forest from the lowlands to the hills, on trunks and limestone at 500–1,500 m; widely grown as a pot plant, among the New Year flowers.
Distribution
Native to southern China (Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Sichuan, Tibet and elsewhere), the Himalayas (India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh) and Indochina (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam); wild in south-western China (scarce through collecting for medicine) and grown in quantity, a pot plant in Japan (dendorobiumu), grown in Singapore's orchid gardens, naturalised in Hawaii.
Season and behaviour
Winter and spring, January to April, pots on sale around the Spring Festival; a stem flowers for three or four weeks.
Photography tips
These are the FilmAnalysis editors' notes, not content from the sources.
Flowers open along the jointed stem, so a portrait frame for the line of the whole stem; a head-on macro for the deep purple blotch on the lip and the waxy petals, in side light. Pink-purple is truest in soft light. A dark green background floats the flowers. A potted plant with its bamboo-like canes is a Chinese-painting subject in window light. Wild plants are protected; never collect.
Photographic styles
The line of flowers along a cane; macro of the purple lip blotch.
Similar species
Phalaenopsis-type dendrobiums (long racemes, flat flowers, tropical cut flowers); Dendrobium officinale (yellow-green); soft-cane dendrobiums are the horticultural name for this species and its hybrids.
Related badge
None yet. No validated photo recognition exists for this species, so no badge is tied to it: a name in the encyclopedia is not evidence in a photograph.
The illustration is original FilmAnalysis artwork. The photograph is from Wikimedia Commons; its licence and author are under it.
Why it is listed: this species comes from the Flower checklist (GBIF backbone and Wikidata verified). Names follow the GBIF backbone and Wikidata; the facts follow the sources below; photo recognition is not offered.
