Red Habenaria Orchid

Description:

Tuberous terrestrial orchid. Pink, orange and yellow forms exist but all the plants in this population were carmine red.

Habitat:

Seen in good sized populations around waterfalls, from full sun to fairly deep shade, nearly always growing in crevices (in rock, trees, cracks in paving etc) but also rarely as lithophytes, growing on rocks with their roots and tubers totally exposed as in the 3rd photo.

Notes:

The butterfly in the first photo is a male Great Mormon - Papilio memnon agenor. Amazingly, this seems to be the first published record of a pollinator for this orchid. The flowers do seem attractive to other Lepidoptera and I would be very interested if anyone else has witnessed pollination occuring.