Dendrobium nobile

Dendrobium nobile, commonly known as the noble dendrobium, is a member of the family Orchidaceae. It has become a popular cultivated decorative house plant, because it produces colourful blooms in winter and spring, at a time when little else is in flower. It is also one of the 50 fundamental herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine, known as shí hú (Chinese: 石斛) or shí hú lán (Chinese: 石斛兰).[4] Dendrobium nobile is one of the most widespread ornamental members of the orchid family. Its blooms are variegated in colour, shading from white through pink and purple, and the many different cultivated varieties produce different sized and coloured blooms.

Dendrobium nobile
CITES Appendix II (CITES)[1]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Monocots
Order: Asparagales
Family: Orchidaceae
Subfamily: Epidendroideae
Genus: Dendrobium
Species:
D. nobile
Binomial name
Dendrobium nobile
Synonyms[3]
  • Callista nobilis (Lindl.) Kuntze
  • Dendrobium coerulescens Wall. ex Lindl.
  • Dendrobium lindleyanum Griff.
  • Dendrobium wallichianum B.S.Williams
  • Dendrobium nobile var. formosanum Rchb.f.
  • Dendrobium nobile var. nobilius Rchb.f.
  • Dendrobium nobile virginale Rolfe
  • Dendrobium formosanum (Rchb.f.) Masam.
  • Dendrobium nobile f. nobilius (Rchb.f.) M.Hiroe
  • Dendrobium nobile var. alboluteum Huyen & Aver.

Dendrobium nobile is an epiphytic or lithophytic plant native to southern China (including Tibet), the Himalayas (India, Bangladesh, Assam, Nepal, Bhutan), and Indochina (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam).[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] The species is also reportedly naturalized in Hawaii.[12] It is the state flower of Sikkim.

Dendrobium nobile occurs in lowland and mountain forests, often on mossy limestone rocks. It is a tender plant that only survives winters in USDA hardiness zones 11 and above.[13] It has strap-shaped, persistent leaves, and blooms mostly in winter and spring. It produces short, 2 to 4 flowered racemes, fragrant, waxy, and highly variable in color, arising from the upper nodes of leafed and leafless canes.

Examples of the species are grown in Kew Gardens Tropical Nursery in London and seeds are stored in the Millennium Seed Bank there.

Characteristics
A nobile-type hybrid or cultivar

Dendrobium nobile is a sympodial orchid which forms pseudobulbs. When the life cycle of the mother plant ends it produces offsets, continuing the life of the plant. The new plant then goes through the same cycle. The inflorescence is erect; during the flowering period blooms form along the length of the flowering stem. This seedling is monocot that is it forms only a single initial leaf, and the plant has thin white roots which attach themselves to another plant or object, making it an epiphytic plant.

Chemical constituents

Extract of the stems of Dendrobium nobile yielded 17 phenanthrenes (including 3,4,8-trimethoxyphenanthrene-2,5-diol, 2,8-dihydroxy-3,4,7-trimethoxyphenanthrene, 3-hydroxy-2,4,7-trimethoxy-9,10-dihydrophenanthrene, 2,8-dihydroxy-3,4,7-trimethoxy-9,10-dihydrophenanthrene, 2-hydroxy-4,7-dimethoxy-9,10-dihydrophenanthrene, 2,2'-dihydroxy-3,3',4,4',7,7'-hexamethoxy-9,9',10,10'-tetrahydro-1,1'-biphenanthrene and 2,3,5-trihydroxy-4,9-dimethoxyphenanthrene).[14][15] There have been many studies on the complex chemistry of the plant.

Toxicity

Dendrobium nobile has been added to the EU novel foods catalogue as it is deemed unsafe for human consumption within food supplements without a safety assessment.[16]

See also

References
  1. "Appendices I, II and III". Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna. 14 October 2010. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  2. "Dendrobium nobile". Germplasm Resources Information Network. Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture. Retrieved 5 February 2008.
  3. "Dendrobium nobile". Plants of the World Online. Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 2017. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  4. Berger, Markus (28 May 2018). "Ethnobotanik: Dendrobium nobile – Eine berauschende Orchidee". www.grow.de (in German). Retrieved 27 January 2023.
  5. Kew World Checklist of Selected Plant Families
  6. Flora of China v 25 p 381, 石斛 shi hu, Dendrobium nobile Lindley, Gen. Sp. Orchid. Pl. 79. 1830.
  7. Wood, H.P. (2006). The Dendrobiums: 1-847. A.R.G. Gantner Verlag K.G., Ruggell.
  8. Lucksom, S.Z. (2007). The orchids of Sikkim and North East Himalaya: 1-984. S.Z.Lucksom, India.
  9. Huda, M.K. (2007). An updated enumeration of the family Orchidaceae from Bangladesh. The Journal of the Orchid Society of India 21: 35-49.
  10. Raskoti, B.B. (2009). The Orchids of Nepal: 1-252. Bhakta Bahadur Raskoti and Rita Ale.
  11. Choudhary, R.K., Srivastava, R.C., Das, A.K. & Lee, J. (2012). Floristic diversity assessment and vegetation analysis of Upper Siang district of eastern Himalaya in North East India. Korean Journal of Plant Taxonomy 42: 222-246.
  12. Ackerman, J.D. (2012). Orchids gone wild. Discovering naturalized orchids in Hawaii. Orchids; the Magazine of the American Orchid Society 81: 88-93.
  13. "Care of Nobile Orchid Dendrobium".
  14. Hwang, Ji Sang; Lee, Seon A; Hong, Seong Su; Han, Xiang Hua; Lee, Chul; Kang, Shin Jung; Lee, Dongho; Kim, Youngsoo; Hong, Jin Tae; Lee, Mi Kyeong; Hwang, Bang Yeon (2010). "Phenanthrenes from Dendrobium nobile and their inhibition of the LPS-induced production of nitric oxide in macrophage RAW 264.7 cells". Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters. 20 (12): 3785–7. doi:10.1016/j.bmcl.2010.04.054. PMID 20483604.
  15. Yang, H; Sung, S. H; Kim, Y. C (2007). "Antifibrotic phenanthrenes of Dendrobium nobile stems". Journal of Natural Products. 70 (12): 1925–9. doi:10.1021/np070423f. PMID 18052323.
  16. "Dendrobium nobile". European Commission. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
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