The following article was written for the Orchid Species Bulletin published by the Orchid Species Society, which is based in Brisbane, Queensland in November 2000.
Bear in mind that any cultivation notes refer to the sub-tropical conditions of Southern Queensland, Australia.

Trudelia cristata (Lindl.) Senghas is also known by the synonym Vanda cristata Lindl. In fact Eric Christenson (1992, 1994) considers it to belong to Vanda section Cristatae Lindl. Nathaniel Wallich discovered this species in Nepal in 1881 and managed to send plants back to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. John Lindley was the first to describe it in his Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants in 1834. Its specific epithet is from the Latin cristatus (crested) for the uneven and furrowed lip surface. Karlheinz Senghas transferred it to Trudelia in Die Orchideen in 1988.

Leslie Garay established Trudelia in the Orchid Digest in 1986, based upon Trud. alpina (Lindl.) Garay. The genus consists of six species with small flowers, primarily found from the Himalayas to southern China. The flowers have subsimilar sepals and petals that are never reflexed and a prominent lip that is continuous with the base of the column. Its lip is excavate at the base, spurless and directed forward and outward. An inhabitant of montane forests, Trud. cristata is found between 600-2,000 m altitude. It is distributed from northern India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Bangladesh.

Trud. cristata is a small- to medium-sized plant with stout stems that are 7.5-15 cm long. Leathery recurved leaves, which are 7.5-12.5 cm long and 12-18 mm broad are borne in two ranks along the stem. The leaf tips are distinctively truncate, tridentate or irregularly three-toothed. Short inflorescences carry 2-6 waxy, fragrant flowers on long twisted pedicels close to the stem. The flowers are 4-5 cm across and have uniform yellow to green, narrow incurved sepals and petals. The thick, fleshy prominent lip is yellow, cream or white, striped with purple to maroon or red-brown. Its tapered lip mid-lobe bears two slender elongate processes or horn-like processes at the end, which look like tusks. Martin Motes (1997) points out that the lip morphology and colouration varies greatly. Not only does it vary from flower to flower on the same inflorescence but also markedly from year to year on different flowerings of the same plant.