''Pterostylis vitrea,'' commonly known as the glassy leafy greenhood, is a plant in the orchid family Orchidaceae and is endemic to Queensland. Non-flowering plants have a rosette of leaves on a short stalk. Flowering plants lack a rosette but have up to seven translucent green flowers with darker green lines on a flowering stem with between five and seven stem leaves.

Description

''Pterostylis vitrea'' is a terrestrial, perennial, deciduous

herb In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal ...

with an underground tuber. Non-flowering plants have a rosette of between three and six leaves, each leaf long and wide on a stalk high. Flowering plants have up to seven translucent green flowers with darker markings on a flowering spike high. The flowering spike has between five and seven stem leaves which are long and wide. The flowers are long, wide. The dorsal sepal and

petal Petals are modified Leaf, leaves that surround the reproductive parts of flowers. They are often advertising coloration, brightly colored or unusually shaped to attract pollinators. All of the petals of a flower are collectively known as the ''c ...

s are joined to form a hood over the column with the dorsal sepal having a brown tip. The lateral sepals turn downwards and are long, wide, joined to each other for more than half their length with brown tips. The labellum is long, wide and cream-coloured with a dark stripe along its mid-line. It flowers from April to July.

Taxonomy and naming

The glassy leafy greenhood was first formally described in 2006 by David Jones who gave it the name ''Bunochilus vitreus'' and published the description in ''Australian Orchid Research'' from a specimen collected near

Maleny Maleny (pronounced ''mah-lay-knee'') is a rural town and Suburbs and localities (Australia), locality in the Sunshine Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. At the , the locality of Maleny had a population of 3,959 people. Maleny was a timber town ...

. In 2008,

Peter Bostock The Ven Peter Geoffrey Bostock (24 December 1911 – 28 May 1999) was an Anglican Archdeacon in the second half of the Twentieth century. He was educated at Charterhouse and The Queen's College, Oxford. After a period of study at Wycliffe Hall, ...

changed the name to ''Pterostylis vitrea''. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

(''vitrea'') is a Latin word meaning "glassy", referring to the glassy appearance of the flowers.

Distribution and habitat

''Pterostylis vitrea'' grows in wet forest and on rainforest margins, sometimes near rocky cliffs between the Kenilworth and the McPherson Range.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q17329273

vitrea ''Vitrea'' is a genus of small, air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the family Pristilomatidae. According to the World Register of Marine Species this genus belongs in the family ''Zonitidae''. Species This ge ...

Orchids of Queensland Plants described in 2006