Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Cyanicula aperta

Caladenia aperta

Cyanicula aperta
Photo: Ian McMaster, CC BY 3.0 au

Cyanicula aperta, the western tiny blue china orchid, is a small deciduous terrestrial orchid from south-west Western Australia with a single bluish-mauve flower. It is a wild species rarely grown in gardens, so care depends on mimicking its heath and granite habitat.

Family
Orchidaceae (Orchid family)
Grows as
Orchid
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Water lightly while in leaf in winter and spring, then keep dry while dormant over summer.
Soil
Free-draining sandy or gritty soil, similar to its native heath.
Temperature
Mild temperate conditions; protect from hard frost.
How easy
Hard
Native range
SSW. Western Australia
Climate
subtropical

About

Cyanicula aperta, commonly known as the western tiny blue china orchid, is a plant in the orchid family Orchidaceae and is endemic to Western Australia. It has a relatively narrow leaf and a single bluish-mauve flower. It is distinguished from the other two similar blue orchids by the sides of the labellum which are erect but well-separated from the column. This species also has a more easterly distribution than C. amplexans and C. sericea.

Where it grows

The western tiny blue china orchid is found in areas near the south coast of Western Australia from the Cape Arid National Park to Dumbleyung in the Avon Wheatbelt, Coolgardie, Esperance Plains and Mallee bioregions of south-western Western Australia, growing in heath, in shrubland or on granite outcrops.

Other Caladenia plants

Coastal spider orchid · Canberra spider orchid · Caladenia ×aestantha · Summer spider orchid · Fairy orchid · Stegostyla Alpina · Boranup spider orchid · Bundarra spider orchid · Charming spider orchid · Dainty spider orchid · Dainty blue china orchid · Genoa spider orchid

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cyanicula aperta by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…