Tiger Orchid

It is an epiphytic and occasionally a lithophytic plant, forming spectacular root bundles. Its cylindric pseudobulbs can grow to a length of 2.5 m. It can grow to gigantic clusters weighing from several hundred kilograms to more than one tonne. One collected in 1893 by Frederick K. Sander & Co. near Penang Island in Malaysia weighed 1 t (0.98 long tons; 1.1 short tons). Half was sent to the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and the other half to the Singapore Botanic Garden. By 1902, the Singapore specimen had grown to be 14.4 m (47 ft) girth by 3 m (9.8 ft) high, and bore simultaneously 2,090 12.5 cm (4.9 in) wide gold and mahogany-coloured flowers plus 1110 unopened buds. Much more recently, in A.D. 2000, biologists Tim Laman and Phil Atkinson found one in Borneo 7.7 m (25 ft) wide and bearing between 2500 and 5000 flowers. The plant completely encircled the host tree 46 m (151 ft) above the ground. The oldest known individual orchid plant is also a G. speciosum. Planted in the Singapore Botanic Garden in 1861 by Garden Director Lawrence Niven and his staff, it was 154 years old in 2015. The plant is also 5 m (16 ft) in width. Each raceme can grow to a height of 3 m, bearing up to 80 flowers, each 10 cm wide. The flowers are yellow with maroon or dark red spots. …

It is native to New Guinea, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines, growing in crotches of large trees on exposed areas of the lowland tropical rainforest.

A giant orchid weighing two tons was one of the highlights in the 1851 exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London. Because of its enormous size, it is rarely cultivated as this species is usually too large to be accommodated in most greenhouses. Cultivated specimens of this species are always grown as terrestrials, as the plants grow as both an epiphyte and terrestrial in habitat.