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Pale Pholidota
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Pale Pholidota
ative Photo: Siddarth Machado
Common name: Pale Pholidota
Botanical name: Coelogyne pallida    Family: Orchidaceae (Orchid family)
Synonyms: Pholidota pallida, Pholidota tixieri, Pholidota yunpeensis

Pale Pholidota is a miniature to medium sized, warm to cool growing epiphytic orchid with slender to swollen pseudobulbs. The plant carries a single, apical, erect, oblong to linear-oblong, pointed to long-pointed, stalked leaves. The plant blooms in the spring and summer on a synanthous, densely many flowered, narrowly wiry, 10-30 cm long, raceme-like inflorescence with avate-sagittate, acute to obtuse, pubescent floral bracts and carrying fragrant membraneous flowers. Flowers are fragrant, white, slightly tinged with reddish, 6 mm wide. pedicel and ovary 3-4 mm. Dorsal sepal broadly elliptic, concave, 4-5 x 2.5-3 mm, dorsally carinate, apex acute; lateral sepals broadly ovate-oblong, oblique, 5-6 x 3-3.5 mm, dorsally carinate, connate at base. Petals ovate-elliptic, about 4 x 2-2.5 mm, lip shallowly saccate, 4-6 mm, 3-lobed, lateral lobes ovate, 1.5-2 mm; mid-lobe transversely oblong, about 3 x 4 mm, apex emarginate; saccate disk with 2 or 3 thick veins near base. Pale Pholidota is found in Bhutan, NE India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, at altitudes of 800-2700 m.

Identification credit: Siddarth Machado Photographed in Sakleshpur, Karnataka.

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