Liparis condylobulbon (Tapered sphinx orchid)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 7 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 7 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.

Liparis condylobulbon, photographed by Forest Botial-Jarvis — fig. a Forest Botial-Jarvis, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-01-02 / obs. 175028645

Liparis condylobulbon, photographed by Cheng-Te Hsu — fig. b Cheng-Te Hsu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 56785336

Liparis condylobulbon, photographed by 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi) — fig. d 呂一起(Lyu yi-chi), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 63087918

Liparis condylobulbon, photographed by chiuluan — fig. e chiuluan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127413261

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: K000943198
Filed as: Liparis condylobulbon Rchb.f.
Det. by: Carr, C.E.
Collected: Schlechter, F.R.R. 1908-12-19
Origin: not recorded
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 21 botanical countries

Native distribution of Liparis condylobulbon, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Borneo	BOR	ASIA-TROPICAL
Jawa	JAW
Lesser Sunda Is.	LSI
Maluku	MOL
Myanmar	MYA
New Guinea	NWG
Philippines	PHI
Solomon Is.	SOL
Sulawesi	SUL
Sumatera	SUM
Thailand	THA
Vietnam	VIE
Caroline Is.	CRL	PACIFIC
Fiji	FIJ
New Caledonia	NWC
Samoa	SAM
Santa Cruz Is.	SCZ
Vanuatu	VAN
Wallis-Futuna Is.	WAL
Taiwan	TAI	ASIA-TEMPERATE
Queensland	QLD	AUSTRALASIA

Not drawn on the map: Santa Cruz Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 41 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	6.7 °C	14.0 °C	19.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	23.8 °C	28.2 °C	30.4 °C
Annual rainfall	1,978 mm	3,151 mm	4,198 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	124 mm	401 mm	584 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 41 research-grade observations of Liparis condylobulbon 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 23 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.

Blepharoglossum condylobulbon (Rchb.f.) L.Li
Blepharoglossum riparium (J.J.Sm.) Ormerod & Juswara
Cestichis clemensiae Ames
Cestichis condylobulbon (Rchb.f.) M.A.Clem. & D.L.Jones
Cestichis persimilis (Schltr.) M.A.Clem. & D.L.Jones
Cestichis vestita Ames
Gyrostachys nesophila (Rchb.f.) Kuntze
Leptorchis condylobulbon (Rchb.f.) Kuntze
Leptorkis condylobulbon (Rchb.f.) Kuntze
Liparis amboinensis (J.J.Sm.) J.J.Sm.
Liparis clemensiae (Ames) Ames
Liparis confusa J.J.Sm.
Liparis confusa var. amboinensis J.J.Sm.
Liparis confusa var. latifolia J.J.Sm.
Liparis confusa var. papuana J.J.Sm.
Liparis dolichopoda Hayata
Liparis nesophila Rchb.f.
Liparis persimilis Schltr.
Liparis riparia J.J.Sm.
Liparis savaiiensis H.Fleischm. & Rech.
Liparis treubii J.J.Sm.
Stichorkis condylobulbon (Rchb.f.) Marg., Szlach. & Kulak
Stichorkis persimilis (Schltr.) Marg., Szlach. & Kulak

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.