Dienia flavovirens
Dienia flavovirens, commonly known as the green spur orchid, is a plant in the orchid family and is endemic to tropical far North Queensland. It is an evergreen, terrestrial orchid with a fleshy stem, wavy leaves and many yellowish green flowers crowded on a green flowering stem.
Description
Dienia flavovirens is a terrestrial, evergreen herb which forms loose clumps with up to six fleshy, upright stems and wide. There are between four and ten more or less upright leaves long and wide. The leaves are dark green, shiny and asymmetrical. A large number of crowded, yellowish green, non-resupinate flowers and many bracts are crowded along a brittle green flowering stem long. The flowers are long and wide. The dorsal sepals is long, about wide and turns downward. The lateral sepals are about long and wide and spread apart from each other. The petals are a similar length but less than wide and curve downwards. The labellum is horseshoe-shaped, about long and wide with between six and eight teeth near its tip. Flowering occurs between January and May.
Taxonomy and naming
This species was first formally described in 1997 by David Jones and Mark Clements from a specimen collected near Malanda, and the description was published in the journal Novon. In 2017, Jones and Clements trasferred the species to Dienia as D. flavovirens in the Australian Orchid Review, and the name is accepted by the Australian Plant Census. The specific epithet is from the Latin words flavus meaning “golden-yellow” or "yellow" and virens meaning "green".
The green spur orchid grows in leaf litter, often on steep slopes near streams in rainforest between Mossman and Tully.