Dendrobium capituliflorum Rolfe 1901 SECTION Pedilonum

Flower Closeup Photo courtesy of Jay Pfahl.

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Common Name White Bottle-Brush Orchid [Australia] - Small-Headed Flower Dendrobium

Flower Size 1/2" [1.2 to 1.8 cm]

Found in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as a small sized, cool to hot growing epiphyte on trunks and branches of trees in lowland savannahs, plantations, coastal forests and rainforests but it is also a lithophyte and is found on rocky outcroppings in grasslands at elevations of sealevel to 750 meters with spindle to cylindrical-shaped, several noded, constricted basally psuedobulbs carrying many, apical dark to gray green on the upper side and velvety purple on the underside, thin, leathery, narrowly lanceolate to elliptical leaves that are unequally bilobed apically that blooms with a ball-like cluster of many flowers that arise from the nodes closer to the middle and base of mature canes, both with and without leaves, arising on dense ovoid clusters of suberect, 3/4" to 1 1/2" [2 to 4 cm] long inflorescence occuring in winter through mid spring. This plant can be mounted or grown in a pot with a fast draining medium and can be grown with much more even conditions than many Dendrobium. A lessening of fertilizer can be benificial to better spring blooming but watering can basically remain the same.

Synonyms Dendrobium confusum J.J.Sm 1911; Pedilonum capituliflorum (Rolfe) Brieger 1981

References W3 Tropicos [http://mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/vast.html] , Kew Monocot list [ http://www.kew.org/wcsp/home.do ], IPNI [ http://www.us.ipni.org/ipni/plantsearch?request_type=search&output_format=query&ret_defaults=on ] The Orchidaceae of German New Guinea Schlechter 1985; Orchid Species Culture; Dendrobium Bakers 1996; Flora Malesiana Orchids of New Guinea Vol II Shuiteman and de Vogel 2002