Dendrochilums in the Philippines | Herbarium Digital Library


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Dendrochilums in the Philippines

Category: Plants and Orchids
Date Posted: 2005-12-28

Dendrochilum Blume (Epidendroideae; Coelogyninae), is one of the largest orchid genera in the Philippines with 89 currently recorded species. Dendrochilums is distributed in Malesia and is most richly represented in Sumarta, Borneo, and the Philippines. Compared to other orchids in the country, it is probably slightly exceeded in number by Bulbophyllum and Dendrobium, both requiring a thorough taxonomic revision before the exact number of species can be determined.

The size of a Dendrochilum plant is highly variable, especially between species. Within Dendrochilum, two main type of sympodial habit can be distinguished, i.e. (1) pendent or creeping plants with elongated rhizomes and widely separated pseudobulbs, and (2) densely to loosely tufted with short rhizomes and more or less clustered pseudobulbs. The first type of habit is found throughout the subgenus Dendrochilum and scattered within the sections Eurybrachium and Platyclinis. In the Philippines, this type is known only from D. pallidiflavens (the sole Philippine representative of subgenus Dendrochilum). The second type of habit, consequently, is the prevailing one, not least in the Philippines.

Dendrochilums are found in various types of forest, from coastal mangrove (D. pallidiflavens) to scrubby submontane forest accommodating species such as D. woodianum, D. pulogense, D. cinnabarinum, and D. elmeri. Many species of Dendrochilum prefer the mossy forest located in humid cloud belt where the trees are mostly covered with mosses, liverworts, filmy ferns, and other hygrophilous plants. Mt. Tabayoc and Mt. Pulog in Luzon?s Cordillera Central are particularly rich in Dendrochilum species. Though generally belonging in the forest, some species of Dendrochilum are sometimes found in much more exposed environment. These plants often have to deal with periodic drought, especially when growing in exposed situations and/or outside the cloud belt. It is not suprising that, like most other epiphytes, Dendrochilum exhibits a number of xeromorphic adaptations.

In the last century, Dendrochilum received little attention from the orchid fanciers because it is a small genus and has small unattractive flowers.