Brachypeza archytas
species of plant
Brachypeza archytas, commonly known as sage orchid, is an epiphytic orchid that is endemic to Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the north-eastern Indian Ocean. It has many cord-like roots, four or five leaves arranged like a fan and a large number of small, crowded, short-lived, white flowers.
Description
Brachypeza archytas has short stems which are obscured by aerial roots. It has four or five strap-like leaves 100–220 mm (4–9 in) long, 16–25 mm (0.6–1 in) wide and arranged like the blades of a fan. A large number of crowded, short-lived, white flowers 8–10 mm (0.3–0.4 in) long and 6–8 mm (0.2–0.3 in) wide are arranged on an arching flowering stem 150–350 mm (6–10 in) long. The dorsal sepal is about 8 mm (0.3 in) long and 2.5 mm (0.1 in) wide, the lateral sepals about 6 mm (0.2 in) long and 4 mm (0.2 in) wide. The petals are shorter and narrower than the sepals and the labellum is about 3 mm (0.1 in) long and 5 mm (0.2 in) wide with three lobes. The side lobes are round with purple markings. Flowering occurs from October to April but the flowers only last for one or two days and the buds often fall off without opening.
Taxonomy and naming
Sage orchid was first formally described in 1891 by Henry Nicholas Ridley who gave it the name Saccolabium archytas and published the description in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.
“Brachypeza archytas” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Brachypeza, archytas and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q530207. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1891.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brachypeza archytas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.