Flower. Photo: Michael Jefferies, Stanthorpe, Qld

Dried plants. Missouri Botanical Garden, collected by Robert Brown, 1802-1805, Sydney, NSW. Type specimens, from which the formal description of the species was made.

Common Name

Rusty Hood

Family

Orchidaceae

Notes

Forb to 25cm tall, growing annually from an underground tuber. Leaves fleshy, in a basal rosette, 1-3cm long, 7-13mm wide, flat. Small leaf-like bracts up the stem. Flowers reddish brown, with translucent white areas, with 6 'petals', looking like 3. Three are joined together to form the hood and two 'petals' dangle below. The sixth 'petal' is the tongue in the middle that flips up when the flower is touched. 2-15 flowers at the top of the stem. Protected NSW.

Note that the description and photo in G.M. Cunningham, WE Mulham, PL Milthorpe and J H Leigh (1981 and later printings) Plants of Western New South Wales page 204 of Pterostylis rufa ssp. aciculiformis (now Pterostylis aciculiformis) is of a different species.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Pterostylis~rufa