Lindley (1836) described this species first as Dendrobium cassythoides based on specimens collected from Allan Cunningham in Sydney 1834. The collector proposed the name cassythoides because of its resemblance to the genus Cassytha (Convolvulaceae), due to a chocolate bronze stems, the leafless character and similar climbing abilities Lindley (1836). Galeola cassythoides was coined by Reichenbach f. (1865) but replaced by a new combination through the transposition to the genus Erythrorchis which was proposed by Garay (1986). He argued with the saprophytic lifestyle, the long and slender column of the flowers, that all species are provided with a short but distinct foot, and the nature of the adnation of the lip to the column-foot. The up to 6 m tall plant is endemic to Eucalyptus forests of eastern Australia and it has been found that both ectomycorrhizal and saprophytic fungi species colonize the plant roots (Dearnaly 2006).
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