Filter GBIF to Phalaenopsis amabilis records that carry an openly licensed photograph and you get 65 of them. Indonesia accounts for 32. Malaysia has four, Papua New Guinea three, the Philippines one, and thirteen carry no country at all. For the species standing behind the most mass-produced houseplant orchid on earth, that is a remarkably quiet paper trail. Photo: Светлана Царахова, via GBIF (CC0) The Plant on the Shelf Is Not This Plant Worth stating plainly, because it causes a lot of confusion.

Almost everything written about this orchid is really about a moth. Darwin saw a dried specimen in 1862, measured the nectary at close to a foot long, and said there had to be an insect in Madagascar with a tongue to match. He was right, and the confirmation arrived decades after his death. It is a wonderful story and it has crowded out a more useful question, which is where the plant actually lives.