Early Blooming Pleione (Pleione praecox)

Early Blooming Pleione is an epiphytic and lithophytic miniature orchid species with big, fragrant flowers. The flowers are quite large with pink petals around a tubular white lip, which is stained deep pink at the mouth and marked internally with yellow. Shortly cylindrical, maroon pseudobulbs, covered by greenish warts, carry 2 apical, narrowly elliptic-lanceshaped, pointed leaves. Early Blooming Pleione is from southwestern China, India, Nepal, Vietnam, north Thailand and Myanamar where it grows in primary highland cloud forests on mossy trees and the rocks below them at altitudes of 1500-3400 m.