Cymbidium goeringii(Rchb.f.) Rchb.f.

Noble orchid

WFO wfo-0000934427 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Cymbidium goeringii, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. a mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-25 / obs. 184470127
Cymbidium goeringii, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. b mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 116619401
Cymbidium goeringii, photographed by 岸本年郎
fig. c 岸本年郎, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189004454
Cymbidium goeringii, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. d mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184470141
Cymbidium goeringii, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. e mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184470154
Cymbidium goeringii, photographed by 岸本年郎
fig. f 岸本年郎, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189005725
Cymbidium goeringii, photographed by Takashi KOIKE
fig. g Takashi KOIKE, CC0 1.0 / obs. 32718778

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 10 botanical countries

Regions where Cymbidium goeringii is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Japan, Korea, East Himalaya, Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam, West Himalaya China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastJapanEast HimalayaMyanmarNepalVietnamWest Himalaya Korea
Native distribution of Cymbidium goeringii, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Japan JAP
Korea KOR
East Himalaya EHM ASIA-TROPICAL
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 65 in flower of 75 examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Cymbidium goeringii observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 65 of 75 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 11 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Cymbidium forrestii Rolfe
  • Cymbidium goeringii var. goeringii
  • Cymbidium goeringii var. mackinnonii (Duthie) A.N.Rao
  • Cymbidium mackinnonii Duthie
  • Cymbidium pseudovirens Schltr.
  • Cymbidium tentyozanense Masam.
  • Cymbidium uniflorum T.C.Yen
  • Cymbidium virens Rchb.f.
  • Cymbidium virescens Lindl.
  • Cymbidium yunnanense Schltr.
  • Maxillaria goeringii Rchb.f.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.