Pterostylis jonesii, commonly known as the montane leafy greenhood, is a plant in the orchid family Orchidaceae and is endemic to a small area of south-eastern Australia. Individual plants have either a rosette of three to six leaves or a flowering spike with up to eleven flowers and five to seven stem leaves. The flowers are translucent green with faint darker green lines and have a brownish-yellow labellum with a dark stripe.
Pterostylis jonesii, is a terrestrial, perennial, deciduous, herb with an underground tuber. Non-flowering plants have a rosette of between three and six narrow egg-shaped leaves, each leaf NaNsigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 long and NaNsigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 wide. Flowering plants have up to twenty translucent green flowers with faint darker lines on a flowering spike NaNsigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 high. The flowering spike has between five and seven stem leaves which are NaNsigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 long and NaNsigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 wide. The flowers are NaNsigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 long and the dorsal sepal and petals are joined to form a hood over the column. The lateral sepals turn downwards and are NaNsigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 long, NaNsigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 wide and joined to each other for about half their length then taper to orange-brown tips. The labellum is about 6sigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 long, 2sigfig=1NaNsigfig=1 wide, brownish-yellow, covered with hair-like cells and with a dark stripe along its mid-line. Flowering occurs from August to November.[1]
This greenhood was first formally described in 2006 by David Jones who gave it the name Bunochilus montanus and published the description in Australian Orchid Research.[2] In 2007 Gary Backhouse changed the name to Pterostylis jonesii, rather than Pterostylis montana because that name was already in use for a New Zealand endemic.[3] [4] The specific epithet (jonesii) honours David Jones who published the original description.
The montane leafy greenhood is only known from forest in the higher areas of north-eastern Victoria and southern New South Wales.