Because, aside from a short flowering time, the species of Gastrodia remain underground throughout their lives, they are extremely cryptic plants and easily overlooked. In 2011 Wood et al. believed the species to be endemic to Mount Kinabalu. The species was first discovered to grow in Indonesia in 2018, when Kenji Suetsugu and colleagues were checking the dried voucher specimens of Gastrodia in the Herbarium Bogoriense, and discovered that one of the specimens of G. javanica which had been collected in western Java was misidentified, and in fact belonged to this species.