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Pterostylis dolichochila
Long-tongued shell orchid is a small terrestrial greenhood orchid from southern Australia, grown as a native bulb-like tuber plant rather than a typical houseplant. Success depends on a dormant summer period and calcareous, well-drained sandy soil.
Pterostylis dolichochila, commonly known as the long-tongued shell orchid, is a species of orchid endemic to southern Australia. As with similar orchids, the flowering plants differ from those which are not flowering. The non-flowering plants have a rosette of leaves but the flowering plants have a single flower with leaves on the flowering spike. This greenhood has a green and white flower with reddish-brown stripes and a sharply pointed dorsal sepal.
The long-tongued shell orchid grows on calcareous sand and limestone, sometimes forming large colonies, in mallee in the south-east of South Australia and the Little Desert and Big Desert areas of Victoria.
Tablelands greenhood · Needle-point rustyhood · Pterostylis actites · Sharp greenhood · Long-tongued summer greenhood · Kauri Greenhood · Sutton Grange Greenhood · Striped greenhood · Shy greenhood · Winter Greenhood · Alpine greenhood · Coastal greenhood
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pterostylis dolichochila 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.
