!Bletia catenulata Ruiz & Pavon 1798 Photo by Stefan Paeffgen ©

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Common Name The Chain-Shaped Bletia

Flower Size 2" [5 cm]

This is a large, cool to warm growing terrestrial orchid with plicate, deciduous, narrowly linear-lanceolate leaves and tightly clusterd, depressed-subglobose corms with basal, foliaceous sheaths that is found at altitudes of 200 to 2500 meters on embankments, landslides and open clearings in the wet montane forests of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil and blooms in the spring and summer on a 18" to 4' [45 cm to 120 cm] long, erect to arching, racemose or rarely one branched inflorescence with 3 to 9, resupinate, successively opening flowers arising from the middle of the side of an older psuedobulb.

Synonyms Bletia ecuadorensis Schltr. 1916; Bletia rodriguesii Cogn. 1901; Bletia sanguinea Poepp & Endl. 1836; Bletia sherrattiana Batem. ex Lindley 1867; Bletia watsoni Hort. 1894; Epidendrum octandrum Vell. 1831; Epistephium herzogianum Kraenzl. 1908; Regnellia purpurea Barb. Rodr. 1877

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Manual of Orchids Stewart 1993; Manual of Cultivated Orchids Bechtel, Cribb & Laurent 1982; Icones Orcidacearum Peruviarum Bennet & Christenson 1993; Encyclopedia of Cultivated Orchids Hawkes 1987; Orchids of Peru Schweinfurth 1960; Orquideas Da Chapada Diamantina Brito & Cribb 2005

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