Robiquetia wassellii
Robiquetia wassellii, commonly known as green pouched orchid, is an epiphytic or lithophytic orchid from the family Orchidaceae. It has thick roots, a pendulous stem, between three and six crowded, dark green leaves and many crowded dark green flowers with pink to red centres and a white to yellowish labellum. It grows on trees and rocks in rainforest in tropical North Queensland, Australia.
Description
Robiquetia wassellii is an epiphytic or lithophytic herb that forms sparse clumps. It has thick roots and a pendulous stem, long. There are between three and six dark green leaves long and about wide. A large number of resupinate, cup-shaped, dark green flowers with a pink to red centre, long, are crowded on a pendulous flowering stem long. The sepals are blunt, narrow egg-shaped, long and wide, the dorsal sepal slightly longer and narrower than the lateral sepals. The petals are about long and wide. The labellum is white to yellowish, about long and wide and is basin-like with a beak-like tip and a spur about. Flowering occurs from June to August.
Taxonomy and naming
Robiquetia wassellii was first formally described in 1967 by Alick Dockrill who published the description in Australasian Sarcahthinae from a specimen collected in the McIlwraith Range by Joseph Leathom Hole Wassell. The specific epithet honours the collector of the type specimen.
Green pouched orchid grows on trees and boulders in humid rainforest in the Iron and McIlwraith Ranges.