Stems 5–15 m long, green to yellowish green or orange, clinging by a mix of long, unbranched roots and short, intricately branched roots; nodes with leaf-like bracts 20–60 × 10–50 mm. Panicles 0.5–2 m long, each 20–150-flowered. Flowers 25–40 × 25–40 mm, greenish to yellow or orange with a white labellum stained with large red blotch and adorned with thin coarse red, orange or white papillae. Perianth segments narrowly obovate-spathulate, 20–28 × 4–9 mm, fleshy, brittle. Dorsal sepal erect or incurved. Lateral sepals widely divergent, curved. Petals spreading or obliquely erect, curved. Labellum obliquely decurved, projected like a landing platform, broadly obovate, 15–23 × 14–18 mm; base tubular, flanking column; midlobe broad, with massed thick red or orange papillae (simple and lobed); margins finely crenate and irregularly crinkled, sometimes with deeper lobes and indentations; apex narrowed and blunt (or spreading and emarginate). Callus of 2 raised, wavy ridges. Capsules cylindrical, 150–250 × 15–25 mm.
Localised in damaged vegetation. In the northern tropics this species grows in rainforest and along stream banks and southerly slopes in wet sclerophyll forest and near streams and moist areas in open forest. In the subtropics and warm temperate regions it tends to grow in more open habitats including drier rainforests, rainforest margins, moist areas in open forest, coastal forests, near streams and on southerly slopes in wet sclerophyll forest.
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