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Pterostylis tenuissima
Swamp greenhood is a small, deciduous terrestrial orchid native to the far south-east of South Australia and south-western Victoria, growing from an underground tuber. It is a wild species of wet swampy ground rather than a common garden or houseplant, so cultivation advice is limited.
Pterostylis tenuissima, commonly known as swamp greenhood, is a species of orchid endemic to the southern mainland of Australia. As with similar greenhoods, the flowering plants differ from those which are not flowering. The non-flowering plants have a rosette of leaves flat on the ground but the flowering plants have a single flower with leaves on the flowering spike. This greenhood has small translucent white flowers with dark green stripes and markings and both the dorsal sepal and lateral sepals have relatively long, thread-like tips.
Swamp greenhood occurs in the far south-eastern corner of South Australia and south-western Victoria with a disjunct population on Wilsons Promontory. It grows in swampy mud under dense thickets of woolly tea-tree (Leptospermum lanigerum) and scented paperbark (Melaleuca squarrosa), sometimes forming large colonies.
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 tenuissima 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.
