Dendrobium kingianum belongs to Orchidaceae family, which is widely grown as an ornamental plant in China. In recent years, a blight disease in D. kingianum is observed in Guangdong province, China. This disease infects the stems and leaves of D. kingianum, causing brown rot and plant death. It has a serious impact on production. A fungus was isolated from the diseased plants of D. kingianum. The pathogenicity test showed that this fungus could infect healthy potted plants and cause the disease. The symptoms on inoculated plants were similar to field symptoms. Morphological characteristics of the fungus from the inoculated plants were consistent with that of the original fungus from field samples. The pathogen was identified by both morphological characteristics and β-tubulin (tub) gene sequence analysis. The morphological characteristics of the isolates were similar to Phytophthora palmivora. BLAST results showed both the sequences of two isolates in this study were 99% identical to the sequence of P. palmivora. In the maximum likelihood (ML) tree based on tub gene sequences, the strains in this study clustered with P. palmivora with 100% support. Therefore, P. palmivora was identified as the pathogen of Phytophthora blight on D. kingianum based on morphological characteristics and phylogenetic analysis. This is the first report of P. palmivora causing Phytophthora blight on D. kingianum in China and worldwide. The inhibitory effect of 10 fungicides on P. palmivora was determined using the mycelial growth rate method. The results showed that four fungicides, namely diacetylomyamide, dimethomorph, metalazepine and metalazepine · mancozeb, were the top four toxic to P. palmivora, and the EC₅₀ value was 0.000 03 μg/mL, 0.0628 μg/mL, 0.2381 μg/mL and 0.5457 μg/mL, respectively. It was followed by chlorothalonil, pyrimethole and mancozeb, the EC₅₀ was less than 10 μg/mL. However, the effect of downy mildew hydrochloride and triethylphosphonate was poor, and the EC₅₀ was more than 100 μg/mL. Carbendazim showed no inhibitory effect, the EC₅₀ was more than 1000 μg/mL. The result would provide a theoretical basis for the prevention and control of Phytophthora blight in Dendrobium.