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| Bulbophyllum tripudians from Tropical Exotique |
Bulbophyllum tripudians belongs to Bulbophyllum section Tripudianthes with about 11 species (Seidenfaden, 1979). This small section is intermediate between section Pleiophyllus and section Cirrhopetalum. Similar to section Pleiophyllus, the plants have two leaves per pseudobulb. And the shape of the flower is somewhat similar to section Cirrhopetalum with large lateral sepals. Most (all?) plants in section Tripudianthes are deciduous, and drop the leaves in the winter, and flowers in the winter or spring from the leaf-less pseudobulbs.
Several species within this section are so similar that the correct identification is not easy without the details of flowers. Indeed, I see many misidentified photos on the internet. Furthermore, much confusion surrounded the naming history of species in this group. I illustrate a part of the confusion at the end of this post. Seidenfaden (1979) appears to be the most thorough treatment of this group, but unfortunately this literature isn't widely available (the illustrations are in Swiss Orchid Foundation database, though). His study was more focused around Thai specimens, and he noted that more thorough studies of Himalayan specimens could lead to a better understanding of this group. I spent a bit of time learning about this group, so I'm writing down what I learned in this post before I forget. I'll mostly follow Seidenfaden (1979). I have seen flowers of only two species so far, so I'm not quite confident about how to identify all species. I have another species which will hopefully flower soon, and I'll update this post as I explore more. I'm still learning, so I appreciate any comments especially if I am misunderstanding some points.
Among more commonly available plants, five of them were similar; B. tripudians, B. refractum, B. kanburiense, B. wallichii, and B. dickasonii. So I mostly focus on these five.
Here is the key to this group, subset of Seidenfaden (1979, p.188-189). I omitted a couple species (B. khaoyaiense, B. sanitii, and B. viridiflorum), which are more distinct. His earlier keys (1970, 1973) were somewhat different, and he improved the key as he learned more about the group. During my learning process, I started from comparisons of illustrations in Swiss Orchid Foundation. It was frustrating without accompanying texts or the key. I've heard that other people also got frustrated about the lack of sufficient information. I hope the extracted key below will help others to study this group.
- a: Dorsal sepal < 8 mm long
- b: Lateral sepals (25-50mm long) with a smooth surface, rarely some few ciliate hairs on blade and along edges near middle, only the very base of the lateral sepals outside somewhat papillous rugose.
- c: Dorsal sepal with hairy-erose edges (=hairy, jagged edges)
- d: Floral bract fat, ovate, broadest below middle, usually with 7-10 veins, somewhat hooded, embracing the ovary. Dorsal sepal broad ovate apiculate, 4.3-4.8mm long, 2mm broad, hairs on inner surface longest and densest at distal third ----> B. tripudians
- d': Floral bracts triangular acute, 4-8mm long, broadest at base, thin with inrolled edges, usually soon backwards curved. Dorsal sepal narrow triangular acuminate 6-7mm long, around 1.7mm broad at base, with scattered short hairs or palillae on inner surface ---> B. wallichii
- c' Dorsal sepal with entire edges, or edges very finely erose
- e: Petals with fimbriate edges, narrowing from a broad base into a nearly subulate upper third. Dorsal sepal narrow ovate acute often recurved and with proximal edges recurved, 5-5.5mm long. 2-2.3mm broad ----> B. kanburiense
- e': Petals ovate acute, fat, densely papillose on inner surface, 5mm long, edges finely erose. Dorsal sepal 7.3mm long, 2.5mm broad, 5 veins, only scattered minute papillae on inner surface. Lateral sepals 49mm long, combined to 5.5mm broad ----> B. dickasonii
- b' Lateral sepals with very rugose-papillose surfaces, 40mm long, each 4mm wide. Dorsal sepal 6mm long, narrow triangular with hairy erose edges. Petals very oblique, with a low broad base and longer nearly subulate apex, fimbriate edges. Floral bract triangular 5mm long, with 3 veins. Flowers more than 1 cm distant. Lip light purple with shiny vesicular globular. ---> B. rugosisepalum
- a': Dorsal sepal 9-10mm long or longer, 4-5mm wide. Lip with a brim of many ciliate nearly 1mm long ciliae. Petals broad triangular, 3-4mm long, very fimbriate-lancinate along edges. Lateral sepals 40-50mm long. ---> B. refractum
More recently, one additional species, Bulbophyllum guttifilum, was described by Seidenfaden (1996) after the key was made. It has a unique antennae at the tip of the dorsal sepal, so it is easy to identify.
Seidenfaden (1970, 1973) used to think B. rugosisepalum is same as B. wallichii, but he noticed the differences and separated B. rugosisepalum in 1979. Since the texture of the lateral sepals is quite different (rugose, bumpy), I would think that it is relatively easy to identify.
Bulbophyllum tripudians
This species is found in Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. It is one of the easier ones to identify within this group. The key characteristic is its (whitish) large and fat floral bract (compared to other related species). Seidenfaden (1979) has a color photo (Plate 12, the final page of the book) illustrating this point against B. wallichii and B. kanburiense. The other trait is that the dorsal sepal shows jagged edges. The color of lateral sepals shows considerable variation (Seidenfaden 1979, p.189). He also mentioned that the Laotian specimens had fine hair on the lateral sepals. The size of lateral sepals appears to vary, too (30-55mm, Seidenfaden 1970). Here is the original description by Parish and Reichenbach in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London (1874) Vol 30. p.154. More detailed description by Reichenbach can be found in The Gardeners' chronicle: a Weekly Illustrated Journal of Horticulture and Allied Subjects. (1876) Vol. 5: p 816-817 (link). I should note that the Fig. 272 (p.363, specimen number GT4002) in Seidenfaden & Smitinand (1965) is actually B. tripudians instead of B. refractum as corrected in Seidenfaden (1979, p.189).
I've noticed that this plant has cinnamon-like fragrance.
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| Note the large white floral bract, which is unique to B. tripudians. |
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| The bract and lateral sepals were removed. |
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| The background is 1mm grid. Abaxial surface on left, and adaxial surface on right for each part except for the lateral sepals, which are reversed. |
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| (from top) Floral bracts, dorsal sepals, petals, column and lip without petals, column an lip with petals. Abaxial surface on left, and adaxial surface on right for each row. |
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| Left dorsal sepal and petal are showing abaxial surface. Right ones are showing the adaxial surface. Noticed the jagged edges of the lateral sepals. |
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| lip from above |
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| lip from side |
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| lip from below |
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| column from above |
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| column from side |
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| column from below. I'm not sure what he green part is, but it is interesting. |
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| Leaves. From the time when I received it in May 2018 from Tropical Exotique. |
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| © Dansk Botanisk Forening 1979. Bulbophyllum tripudians C.S.P.Parish & Rchb.f. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland. Fig 135 from Seidenfaden (1979) |
Bulbophyllum refractum
This is also relatively easy to identify if you look at the size of dorsal sepal. The dorsal sepals are much longer (about 1cm) compared to other species. Also, the dorsal sepal has some hairs, but the edge isn't jagged, and relatively smooth. The hairs on the lip is long. Here is the link to original description. It was originally described from Java. It is the southern=most species, and other related species are not in Java. In older literatures, many other species were incorrectly rumped into B. refractum, so some literature said that they can be from Thailand or other nearby countries. But it is safer to assume that it is limited to Java.
The following photos are taken by J. B. Comber in Java, where only B. refractum is found. Note that the dorsal sepals are much larger with some hairs, but smooth edges. Also the hairs on the lip are fine and long.
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| © J.B. Comber 1977. Bulbophyllum refractum (Zoll.) Rchb.f.. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland. |
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| © J.B. Comber 1977. Bulbophyllum refractum (Zoll.) Rchb.f.. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland. |
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| © Dansk Botanisk Forening 1973. Bulbophyllum refractum (Zoll.) Rchb.f.. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland. Fig 130 from Seidenfaden (1973) |
Bulbophyllum dickasonii
I'm not too familiar with B. dickasonii, but the illustration shows that the shape of the petal is similar to the dorsal sepal, and it is not too pointy like other species. It is so far found only in Chin HIlls of Myanmar.
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| © Dansk Botanisk Forening 1979. Bulbophyllum dickasonii Seidenf. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland. Fig 139 from Seidenfaden (1979) |
For the other three species, first we need to look at the edge of the dorsal sepals. If the edge is jagged and it is narrow, it is B. wallichii. If it has relatively smooth edge, it is either B. dickasonii or B. kanburiense.
Bulbophyllum kanburiense
This Thai species was described by Seidenfaden (1970). The dorsal sepal is recurved with backwards rolled edges with only few hairs, and it has entire (smooth) edges. The lateral sepal is smaller, and around 25mm long (he doesn't mention how variable this is). When I look at the photos of others, which is likely to be B. kanburiense, some plants seem to have fairly long lateral sepals (difficult without a scale, but looks much longer than 25mm). The side (border) of the lip is supposed to be very finely cilliate (fine hairs).
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| © Dansk Botanisk Forening 1973. Bulbophyllum kanburiense Seidenf. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland. Fig 128 from Seidenfaden (1973) |
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| © Dansk Botanisk Forening 1979. Bulbophyllum kanburiense Seidenf. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland. Fig 138 from Seidenfaden (1979) |
Bulbophyllum wallichii
This species has a complicated naming history as described in the next section. It has a wide geographic distribution from W. Himalaya, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar, to Thailand (Seidenfaden 1979). He mentioned that he noticed some geographic variations in the phenotype. Thai plants have smaller floral bracts (3-4mm long) and 3 veins vs 6-8mm long and 5-7 veins for the plant from Darjeeling, India. He illustrated one specimen from Darjeeling and another from Thailand (linked at the bottom of this section). By comparing the two illustrations, I noticed that Thai plant seems to have a wider dorsal sepal, and also the side-lobe like structure of the lip seems to stick up higher.
I'm tentatively calling the plant I got as B. refractum from Tropical Exotique (Thailand) as B. wallichii. I was deciding between this and B. kanburiense. There are a few things which isn't the perfect match to B. wallichii (noted below), but considering the geographic variation, it may not be surprising.
I didn't detect any fragrance with this plant.
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| Bulbophyllum wallichii. Note that the distance betweens flowers seem to be further apart in comparison to B. tripudians. Also the stem goes zig-zag. |
In the following photo, the backside of the lateral sepals, around the place where they are attached to the ovary, you can see short hairs. This wasn't illustrated in Seidenfaden (1979). However, the illustration of B. kanburiense (Fig. 138, p.182) shows this feature. Most photos of B. wallichii in OrchidRoots appear to be misidentified B. kanburiense (at the time of this writing). But this photo (link) appears to be correct B. wallichii, and it shows the same hairs behind the lateral sepals.
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| Note the short hair at the base of the lateral sepals. |
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| Lateral sepals were removed. |
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| Lateral sepals and petals were removed. Note that the anther cap fell off in this and following two photographs. |
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| Dosal sepal was removed, showing the top of the column and the anther cap. |
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| The left petal is showing the abaxial surface (toward the ovary). Others are showing the adaxial surface (toward the column). The green ruler on the top is metric, each increment is 1mm. |
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| Note the jugged edge of the dorsal sepal. The left petal is showing the abaxial surface (toward the ovary). Others are showing the adaxial surface (toward the column). |
Compared to the illustration by Seidenfaden (1979, see below), the dorsal sepal seems to be a bit fatter even if comparing to Thai specimen with tge fatter dorsal sepal, and the shape is more similar to B. kanburiense. However, I wouldn't call the edge of the dorsal sepal as entire (smooth), it is definitely jagged (erose). Also, Seidenfaden (1979) mentioned that the bract of Thai B. wallichii is usually 3 veined and 3-4mm long while Indian specimen had 5-7 veins and 6-8mm long. My plant has 5-6 veins and about 5mm long, so it is more similar to Indian plants.
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| The left dorsal sepal and bract are showing the abaxial surface (toward the ovary). Others are showing the adaxial surface (toward the column). The background grid paper has 1mm grid. |
The lips seems to show the tall side lobe, similar to Thai specimen.
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| Column and lip from side |
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| column and lip from above |
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| Column from above and lip from below |
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| Column from below and lip from above. |
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| Leaves. It is from the time when I received it in May, 2018. |
The two illustration below shows the geographic variation within B. wallichii. The first one is from Darjeeling, and the second one is from Thailand.
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| © Dansk Botanisk Forening 1979. Bulbophyllum wallichii Rchb.f in Walp. Ann. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland. Fig 136 from Seidenfaden (1979). This is a plant from Darjeeling. |
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| © Dansk Botanisk Forening 1979. Bulbophyllum wallichii Rchb.f in Walp. Ann. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland. Fig 137 from Seidenfaden (1979). This is a plant from Thailand. |
Finally, here are side-by-side photos of B. wallichii (left) and B. tripudians (right).
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| Note the much larger floral bract of B. tripudians |
Nomenclature history of Bulbophyllum wallichii
The naming history of B. wallichii is extremely confusing, and there are two species involved; current names of these two species are B. wallichii and B. muscicola. In the following explanation, I use Bwal to indicate the species currently known as B. wallichii and Bmus for B. muscicola. The clearest explanation of the confusion is found in Garay et al (1994, p.622), but Seidenfaden (1973, p.197 and 235) contains similar explanation. Garay et al. (1994) had a small mistake, so it is corrected in the following explanation which traces the events in the chronological order.
1835 John Lindley first described Cirrhopetalum wallichii in p.59 (link) of his book, "The Genera and Species of Orchidaceaeous Plants." This description matches with Bmus. But he made a mistake to put a wrong specimen catalogue number ("l. c. no. 1980"), which corresponds to Bwal. At the end of description, Lindley added "Ad iconem Wallichianum", which I think means "for/toward Wallich's illustration", indicating that the species description came from the Wallich's illustration, not the specimen with the catalogue number 1980.
1835. Nathaniel Wallich's illustration and more thorough description of Bmus as C. wallichii is published in the same year in his 3-volume book "Plantae Asiaticae Rariores -- Descriptions and figures of a select number of unpublished East Indian plants" Vol 1. p. 53-43 (link) and Tab. (Plate) 67 (link).
1839 Lindley was the editor of Edwards's Botanical Register from 1829-1843. In this series, I'm not sure if there were acutally other authors who wrote the articles (edited by Lindley) or if Lindley wrote everything. Other literature seems to assume Lindley was the actual author, so I follow this. In 1839, Lindley noticed the mistake he did in 1835. Instead of correcting the corresponding type-specimen, he chose to re-describe the specimen (catalogue number 1980), which is Bwal, as Cirrhopetalum wallichii. In Vol 25 (1839), p.71-72 (link), Lindley states (C. wallichii is) "a Nepalese plant, the specific character of which in the Genera and Species of Orchidaceous plants is erroneous, in consequence of bad specimens and an Indian drawing having been misunderstood. It is necessary to correct the definition of that species as follows." Now there are two species descriptions, one for Bmus and another for Bwal, attached to a single name, C. wallichii. So the second descrption (describing Bwal) is considered to be "Nomen illegitimum." Lindley repeated the same short description of Bwal again as C. wallichii in Edwards's Botanical Register Vol. 29 (1843) in the third page after Plate 49 (link).
1861 Following Lindley's correction in 1839, Reichenbach ignored the original C. wallichii description of Bmus. Then he transferred C. wallichii from 1839 description of Bwal to Bulbophylllum and described it as B. wallichii in Annales Botanices Systematicae Vol 6. p. 259 (link). At that time, Bulbophyllum (not Cirrhopetalum) wallichii hadn't been described before, this description of Bwal is not Nomen illegitimum any more. Annales Botanices Systematicae was authored (edited?) by Guilielmo Gerado Walpers for Vol. 1-3 and by Carolo Mueller for Vol. 4-7, and freuqntly abbreviated as "Walp. Ann." in the old literature (including Seidenfaden's monographs).
1890 Joseph Dalton Hooker realized the illegitimacy of Lindley's 1839 correction, and he separated the two species Bmus and Bwal in his book, "The Flora of British India" Volume 5. p. 776 (link) and p. 779 (link). He used Cirrhopetalum wallichii for Bmus. But he incorrectly put Bwal as a synonym of Javan Bulbophyllum (Cirrhopetalum) refractum.
1970-1979 Gunnar Seidenfaden revisited Hooker's (1980) treatment, and separated Bwal from B. refractum. However he thought that B. wallichii from Reichenback (1861) was invalid, and attached a new name B. refractoides for Bwal. In 1973, he recognized B. wallichii as the valid name. However, as noted in Seidenfaden (1979), the illustrations of specimen GT 5849 used for B. wallichii in Seidenfaden (1970) and (1973) were from a different species B. rugosisepalum, which was described as a new species by him in 1979. I should note that Swiss Orchid Foundation has still one illustration of B. rugosisepalum as B. wallichii (link).
Now I understand the confusing history, but there is one additional thing I'm a bit puzzled about. According to Tropicos (link), Lindlley's "The Genera and Species of Orchidaceaeous Plants" is published in May 1835, earlier than Wallich's "Plantae Asiaticae Rariores" (July 15, 1835). So I would think that the original publication should be connected to the former, but somehow IPNI (link) and Kew's WCSP (link) is linking it to the later. So either the publication dates in Tropicos aren't right, or I might be missing some points.
Literature Cited:
- Garay, L. A., Hamer, F., & Siegerist, E. S. (1994). The genus Cirrhopetalum and the genera of the Bulbophyllum alliance. Nordic Journal of Botany, 14(6), 609-646.
- Seidenfaden, G. (1970) Contributions to the Orchid Flora of Thailand II. Botanisk Tidsskrift 65 (4): 313-370
- Seidenfaden, G. (1973) Notes on Cirrhopetalum Lindl, Dansk Botanisk Arkiv, 29 (1), 260pp, Publisher: Dansk Botanisk Forening ISSN 0011-6211
- Seidenfaden, G. (1979) Orchid Genera in Thailand. VIII. Bulbophyllum Thou., Dansk Botanisk Arkiv, 33 (3) 228pp, Publisher: Dansk Botanisk Forening
- Seidenfaden, G. (1996). A remarkable new species of Bulbophyllum, sect. Tripudianthes from Thailand. Nordic Journal of Botany, 16(2), 141-143.
- Seidenfaden, G., & Smitinand, T. (1965). The orchids of Thailand: a preliminary list. The Siam Society, Bangkok, Thailand.
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