Spreading Oreorchis

Family: Orchids. Habitat - China.

Oreorchis has a chain-like rhizome. Leaf solitary, leathery, sword-shaped, pointed, appearing in the second half of summer, overwintering and dying back by July. Leaf length up to 25 cm, width 2.5 cm. Inflorescence a many-flowered raceme of 9–24 flowers, lax, up to 16 cm long, without an apical flower. Bracts significantly shorter than the ovary. Flowers nodding, perianth segments lanceolate, greenish-yellow, sometimes near the tips with reddish-purple speckles, up to 9 mm long. Lip equal to them, cuneate-obovate, whitish with reddish-purple dots, three-lobed, margins wavy, slightly emarginate at the tip, without a spur. Ovary straight on a slightly twisted pedicel. Flowers in July - August.

Oreorchis has an unusually structured rhizome — thin, with axillary, radially developing tubers (thickened internodes) up to 1.5 cm in diameter and bearing a reserve of dormant buds. Development of shoots from these buds leads to vegetative propagation. Long roots arise from parts of the rhizome between the tubers. The tubers and the above-ground shoots developing on them are sheathed by foliar sheaths, the number of which equals the number of above-ground shoots. It reproduces equally intensively by seed and vegetatively.

In cultivation it is hardy. In the Moscow region it blooms slightly earlier than Cremastra, with which it is very similar in cultivation and propagation. It self-seeds. Over time it forms dense clumps. It pairs well with other orchids. Very promising for wide distribution.