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Didymoplexis pallens
Crystal bells is a leafless, mycotrophic terrestrial orchid that lives on fungi in the soil rather than photosynthesising, and it appears only briefly with the first rains of the wet season. It is a wild forest orchid rarely grown in gardens, so cultivation is not established.
Didymoplexis pallens, commonly known as crystal bells or 双唇兰 (shuang chun lan), is a leafless terrestrial mycotrophic orchid in the family Orchidaceae. It has up to fifteen small, white, pinkish or brownish flowers on a fleshy yellow flowering stem. The flowers open one at a time, remaining open for a short time. Crystal bells is widely distributed in Asia, Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Australia and some Pacific Islands.
Crystal bells grows in rainforests, grassy forest and bamboo forest China, Taiwan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, New Guinea, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia including Christmas Island and islands of the southwest Pacific. In Australia it occurs on the Cape York Peninsula as far south as Cardwell, on some Torres Strait Islands, in northern parts of the Northern Territory and in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Didymoplexis pallens 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.
