Pleione praecox

Common Name - The Early Blooming Pleione

Pleione praecox is a small sized, epiphytic or lithophytic, cool to cold growing species is from SW. China, India, Nepal, Vietnam, N. Thailand and Burma where it grows in primary highland cloud forests on mossy branches or the rocks below them at altitudes of 1500 to 3400 meters with shortly cylindrical, maroon pseudobulbs covered by greenish warts carrying 2 apical, narrowly elliptic-lanceolate, acute leaves and blooms on a basal, erect, 3 to 6" [7.5 to 15 cm] long inflorescence with a single, fragrant [of primrose] flower and warty, basal sheaths that appears in the fall on old, leafless psuedobulbs.

Synonyms

Coelogyne birmanica Rchb.f. 1882; *Coelogyne praecox Lindl. 1821; Coelogyne praecox var. sanguinea Lindl. 1854; Coelogyne praecox var. tenera Rchb.f. 1883; Coelogyne praecox var. wallichiana (Lindl.) Lindl. 1854; Coelogyne reichenbachiana T. Moore 1868; Coelogyne wallichiana Lindl. 1830; Cymbidium praecox Sm. 1821; Dendrobium praecox J.E.Sm 1819; *Epidendrum praecox Sm. 1806; Pleione birmanica (Rchb.f.) B.S.Williams 1894; Pleione concolor hort. ex B.S. Williams 1894; Pleione praecox var. alba E.W.Cooper 1951; Pleione praecox var. candida Pfitzer 1907; Pleione praecox var. reichenbachiana (T.Moore & Veitch) Torelli & Riccab. 200; Pleione reichenbachiana (T. Moore) Kuntze 1891; Pleione wallichiana (Lindl.) Lindl. & Paxton 1851-2