Dendrobium moschatum(Banks) Sw.

Musky-smelling Dendrobium

WFO wfo-0000939908 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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.

Dendrobium moschatum, photographed by Rejoice Gassah
fig. a Rejoice Gassah, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-06-06 / obs. 78269895
Dendrobium moschatum, photographed by Rejoice Gassah
fig. b Rejoice Gassah, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 78269933
Dendrobium moschatum, photographed by Rejoice Gassah
fig. c Rejoice Gassah, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 78269963
Dendrobium moschatum, photographed by Rejoice Gassah
fig. d Rejoice Gassah, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 78269964
Dendrobium moschatum, photographed by Rejoice Gassah
fig. e Rejoice Gassah, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 78270015
Dendrobium moschatum, photographed by Brook
fig. f Brook, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 12654101
Dendrobium moschatum, photographed by luminous
fig. g luminous, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 23156886
Dendrobium moschatum, photographed by Rejoice Gassah
fig. h Rejoice Gassah, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 78269518

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000596499
Filed as
Dendrobium moschatum (Banks) Sw.
Det. by
Kerr, A.F.G.
Collected
Kerr, A.F.G. 1910-05-29
Origin
TH
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 12 botanical countries

Regions where Dendrobium moschatum is native: China South-Central, Assam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, West Himalaya China South-CentralAssamBangladeshCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaLaosMyanmarNepalThailandVietnamWest Himalaya
Native distribution of Dendrobium moschatum, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Bangladesh BAN
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Laos LAO
Myanmar MYA
Nepal NEP
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
West Himalaya WHM
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 36 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 7.9 °C 12.0 °C 21.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.4 °C 30.7 °C 34.8 °C
Annual rainfall 1,317 mm 2,312 mm 3,672 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 31 mm 67 mm 455 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 36 research-grade observations of Dendrobium moschatum that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 13 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.

  • Callista calceola (Carey ex Hook.) Kuntze
  • Callista calceolaria (Carey ex Hook.) Kuntze
  • Callista moschata (Banks) Kuntze
  • Cymbidium moschatum (Banks) Willd.
  • Dendrobium calceolaria Carey ex Hook.
  • Dendrobium cupreum Herb. ex Lindl.
  • Dendrobium moschatum Wall. ex D.Don
  • Dendrobium moschatum var. cupreum (Lindl.) Rchb.f.
  • Dendrobium moschatum var. unguipetalum I.Barua
  • Dendrobium pedilochilum Schltr.
  • Epidendrum moschatum Banks
  • Epidendrum moschatum Buch.-Ham.
  • Thicuania moschata (Banks) Raf.

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.