Plant: robust tall with stout, wide, fleshy, upright sheathing leaf.

Flowers: up to twelve, 15mm diameter, blue or mauve. Tepals usually long, rather narrow. Column open steeply sloping backwards; shorter than the anther at the back; taller than anther at the front, violet to red, fleshy, with erect toothed margins. Column arms erect reddish, with coarse, yellow or orange, sometimes branched cilia.

Habitat: lowland to montane wetlands, scrub, open forest. Throughout.

Flowering: November to February.

Conservation: scattered, never common; not threatened.

Notes: distinctive orange or yellow cilia on the column arms and sloping, deeply cleft column top. Column prone to malformation, with triangular lobe in front. Close to Australian T. circumsepta.

Key features: column white below, open at the top, violet to red, steeply sloping backwards, cilia sparse, yellow, plant robust.