This is a quite unusual close up of a very common cultivated plant nowadays. For composition the picture was turned 90 degrees clockwise.

This is not a Photoshop composition!


The generic name means "Phalaen[a]-like" and is probably a reference to the genus Phalaena, the name given by Linnaeus to a group of large moths; the flowers of some species supposedly resemble moths in flight. For this reason, the species are sometimes called Moth orchids.
They are native throughout southeast Asia from the Himalayan mountains to the islands of Polillo and Palawan of the Philippines and northern Australia. Orchis Island off Taiwanis named after this orchid. Little is known about their habitat and their ecology in nature since little field research has been done in the last decades.