[4] It is native to the Eastern and the Western Cape Provinces of South Africa, flowering from the end of August to the middle of October and peaking in September.

Bartholina burmanniana is rarely found in colonies, growing in small groups or singly in a variety of habitats and soil types.

[3] Mass flowering is observed after summer bush fires remove thick vegetation, creating an opportune environment for attracting pollinators.

[3] Bartholina burmanniana was one of the earliest of the Cape orchids to be described in published works reputedly due to its unusual beauty.

[4] A characteristic feature within the genus is the white- mauve flowers with a fan-shaped spreading lip each divided into many linear segments.

[3] As a deciduous geophytic plant it goes dormant in the summer after flowering, dying back to the tuberoid until the next winter growing season.

[5] The species epithet burmanniana was given by Carl Linnaeus to honour his friend Johannes Burman (1707-1779) a physician and professor of botany in Amsterdam with an early interest in the flora of the Cape.

It can be found most commonly in the fertile clay soils of the ‘renosterveld’, a Dicerothamnus rhinoceritis dominated shrubland,[4] on stony slopes or amongst bushes and clearings.

[4] It is also found on the nutrient poor, acid sandstone soils of the lowland and montane-fynbos shrubland dominated by the Cape heathland vegetation of Agathosma and Erica.

[4] Bartholina burmanniana is rarely found in colonies, growing in small groups or singly in a variety of habitats and soil types.

[4] While not fire-dependent, mass flowering of B. burmanniana is observed after summer bush fires remove thick vegetation, creating an opportune environment for attracting pollinators.

[3] Field work undertaken in 2009 at the Cape Peninsula by Greig Russell and Bill Liltved, has proposed the long-proboscid tabanid fly, Philoliche rostrate, to be the pollinator of this species.

[3]  Heinrich Bernard Oldenland collected the species type, placing the voucher in the herbarium of Johannes Burman the Dutch botanist and physician.

Current classifications place B. burmanniana within the order Asparagales, the family Orchidaceae, the subfamily Orchidoideae and the subtribe Orchidinae.

[4]  It was first brought to Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, from the Cape of Good Hope in 1787, by Francis Masson a Scottish plant-hunter and horticulturalist.