Spathoglottis plicataBlume

Philippine ground orchid

WFO wfo-0000312121 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Spathoglottis plicata, photographed by Tommy Andriollo
fig. a Tommy Andriollo, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-17 / obs. 189215026

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
168155
Filed as
Spathoglottis plicata Blume
Det. by
J. D. Ackerman 1996-01-01
Collected
A. H. Liogier 1980-03-20
Origin
PR
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 37 botanical countries

Regions where Spathoglottis plicata is native: Nansei-shoto, Taiwan, Andaman Is., Assam, Bangladesh, Bismarck Archipelago, Borneo, Cambodia, East Himalaya, India, Jawa, Laos, Lesser Sunda Is., Malaya, Maluku, Myanmar, New Guinea, Nicobar Is., Philippines, Solomon Is., Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, Sumatera, Thailand, Vietnam, Queensland, Caroline Is., Cook Is., Fiji, Marianas, New Caledonia, Niue, Samoa, Santa Cruz Is., Tonga, Vanuatu, Wallis-Futuna Is. TaiwanAssamBangladeshBismarck ArchipelagoBorneoCambodiaEast HimalayaIndiaJawaLaosLesser Sunda Is.MalayaMalukuMyanmarNew GuineaPhilippinesSolomon Is.Sri LankaSulawesiSumateraThailandVietnamQueenslandFijiNew Caledonia Nansei-shotoAndaman Is.Nicobar Is.Caroline Is.Cook Is.MarianasNiueSamoaTongaVanuatuWallis-Futuna Is.
Native distribution of Spathoglottis plicata, 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
Andaman Is. AND ASIA-TROPICAL
Assam ASS
Bangladesh BAN
Bismarck Archipelago BIS
Borneo BOR
Cambodia CBD
East Himalaya EHM
India IND
Jawa JAW
Laos LAO
Lesser Sunda Is. LSI
Malaya MLY
Maluku MOL
Myanmar MYA
New Guinea NWG
Nicobar Is. NCB
Philippines PHI
Solomon Is. SOL
Sri Lanka SRL
Sulawesi SUL
Sumatera SUM
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE
Caroline Is. CRL PACIFIC
Cook Is. COO
Fiji FIJ
Marianas MRN
New Caledonia NWC
Niue NUE
Samoa SAM
Santa Cruz Is. SCZ
Tonga TON
Vanuatu VAN
Wallis-Futuna Is. WAL
Nansei-shoto NNS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Taiwan TAI
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.

Flowering 391 in flower of 401 examined

Proportion of examined Spathoglottis plicata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 35 35 100% 90% to 100%
Feb 25 26 96% 81% to 99%
Mar 34 36 94% 82% to 98%
Apr 23 23 100% 86% to 100%
May 32 34 94% 81% to 98%
Jun 34 34 100% 90% to 100%
Jul 30 31 97% 84% to 99%
Aug 34 35 97% 85% to 99%
Sep 20 20 100% 84% to 100%
Oct 48 48 100% 93% to 100%
Nov 45 45 100% 92% to 100%
Dec 31 34 91% 77% to 97%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Spathoglottis plicata 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. 391 of 401 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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.

When it blooms, where you are 1 state

StatePeaksObservations in flower
Hawaii Jan 83

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,933 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 15.0 °C 19.2 °C 24.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.6 °C 26.4 °C 30.3 °C
Annual rainfall 1,058 mm 2,537 mm 4,161 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 131 mm 365 mm 734 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,933 research-grade observations of Spathoglottis plicata 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 20 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.

  • Bletia angustifolia Gaudich.
  • Calanthe poilanei Gagnep.
  • Paxtonia rosea Lindl.
  • Phaius rumphii Blume
  • Spathoglottis angustifolia (Gaudich.) Benth. & Hook.f.
  • Spathoglottis augustorum Rchb.f.
  • Spathoglottis daenikeri Kraenzl.
  • Spathoglottis deplanchei Rchb.f.
  • Spathoglottis grandifolia Schltr.
  • Spathoglottis lilacina Griff.
  • Spathoglottis papuana var. puberiflora R.S.Rogers & C.T.White
  • Spathoglottis papuana var. puberula Schltr.
  • Spathoglottis plicata f. alba (Ridl.) N.H.Tuan & O.Gruss
  • Spathoglottis plicata f. alba N.H.Tuan & O.Gruss
  • Spathoglottis plicata var. alba Ridl.
  • Spathoglottis plicata var. minahassae Schltr.
  • Spathoglottis rosea (Lindl.) G.Nicholson
  • Spathoglottis spicata Lindl.
  • Spathoglottis vieillardii Rchb.f.
  • Spathoglottis wariana Schltr.

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.