''Gastrodia spatulata'' is a species of ''

Gastrodia ''Gastrodia'', commonly known as potato orchids or as 天麻属 (tian ma shu), is a genus of terrestrial leafless orchids in the family Orchidaceae, about ninety of which have been described. Orchids in this genus have fleshy, upright stems and ...

'' native to

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

and

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

. It is known from

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and eas ...

and

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

Taxonomy

It was first described by

Cedric Errol Carr Cedric Errol Carr (16 November 1892 – 3 June 1936) was a New Zealand botanist, specialising in orchids. At the age of seven he went to England with his family but from January 1913 until 1931, apart from military service from 1916 to 1918, he wo ...

in 1935, from a dried specimen collected in the Penibukan range in Malaysia's

Sabah Sabah () is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah borders the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and the North Kalimantan province of Indone ...

state in 1933, as belonging to a new

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus, and named ''Neoclemensia spathulata'', on the basis of details of the

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

of the flower -it has a shield-shaped stigma on top of a raised protuberance at the base of the

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

, as opposed to an oblong or broadly V-shaped stigma above the base of the column in the rest of ''Gastrodia'' known at the time. In 2011

Jeffrey James Wood Jeffrey may refer to: * Jeffrey (name), including a list of people with the name * ''Jeffrey'' (1995 film), a 1995 film by Paul Rudnick, based on Rudnick's play of the same name * ''Jeffrey'' (2016 film), a 2016 Dominican Republic documentary film ...

and colleagues, having found it growing on

Mount Kinabalu Mount Kinabalu ( ms, Gunung Kinabalu, Dusun language, Dusun: ''Gayo Ngaran or Nulu Nabalu'') is the highest mountain in Borneo and Malaysia. With an elevation of , it is List of islands by highest point, third-highest peak of an island on Eart ...

in Sabah, subsumed it into the genus ''Gastrodia'', apparently misspelling the specific epithet as "''spatulata''" as opposed to "''spathulata''". This mistake has been rectified by subsequent authors.

Description

It is morphologically similar to '' Gastrodia gunatillekeorum'', which was discovered in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

in 2020.

Distribution

Because, aside from a short flowering time, the species of ''Gastrodia'' remain underground throughout their lives, they are extremely cryptic plants and easily overlooked. In 2011 Wood ''et al''. believed the species to be

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to Mount Kinabalu. The species was first discovered to grow in Indonesia in 2018, when

Kenji Suetsugu Kenji may refer to: *Kenji (given name), a masculine Japanese given name, and list of people & characters with this name *Kenji (era), a Japanese era spanned from 1275 to 1278 * ''Kenji'' (manga) (拳児), a 1980s manga by Matsuda Ryuchi * "Kenji" ...

and colleagues were checking the dried voucher specimens of ''Gastrodia'' in the ''Herbarium Bogoriense'', and discovered that one of the specimens of ''G. javanica'' which had been collected in western

was misidentified, and in fact belonged to this species.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q28816406 Orchids of Indonesia spatulata