Bulbophyllum gadgarrense
Bulbophyllum gadgarrense, commonly known as tangled rope orchid, is a species of epiphytic orchid with small pseudobulbs hidden beneath purplish brown bracts, dark green, grooved leaves and small white flowers with orange or yellow tips. It grows on rainforest trees in tropical North Queensland.
Description
Bulbophyllum minutissimum is an epiphytic herb with tangled, branching, hanging stems long. The stems have purplish brown bracts that hide the pseudobulbs that are only long and wide. Each pseudobulbs has a thick, fleshy, dark green leaf long and wide with a narrow groove and a stalk. A single flower long and wide is borne on a thread-like flowering stem about long. The flowers are whitish with orange or yellow tips. The sepals are fleshy, long, about wide and the petals about long and wide. The labellum is about long and less than wide and fleshy. Flowering occurs from July to September.
Bulbophyllum gadgarrense was first formally described in 1949 by Herman Rupp who published the description in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland from a specimen collected near Gadgarra on the Atherton Tableland by Frank Kajewski. The specific epithet is a reference to the type location.
Distribution and habitat
Bulbophyllum minutissimum grows on mossy parts of rainforest trees where there is good air movement. It occurs between the Big Tableland and the Tully River in Queensland.