Common Christmas orchid

This evergreen terrestrial orchid is a common rainforest orchid of the Brisbane area. It grows in deep shade in moist rainforest and is very difficult to overlook when in flower as the white flowers stand out like a lighthouse in the rainforest gloom. This is a well known rainforest orchid with the common name of Christmas Orchid as this orchid flowers at Christmas.

The flower stem is 1 to 1.5 m tall with a cluster of 30 mm wide white flowers. The plant has large dark green pleated leaves approaching 1 m in length coming from the pseudobulbs at the base. This orchid is very distinctive and cannot be confused with anything else.