Epidendrum anthropophorum Rchb.f. 1856 GROUP Andean SUBGROUP Anthropophorum

Photo by © Eric Hunt

Drawing

Drawing by © Jimenez, Hágsater & E.Santiago and The AMO Herbario Website

Common Name The Human-Like Epidendrum [refers to the shape of the lip]

Flower Size 3/16" [1 cm]

Found in Colombia [Garay] and southwestern Ecuador on the westeren facing slopes in wet cloud forests at elevations around 2400 to 2800 meters as a small to medium sized, cold growing epiphyte with branching, cane-like, terete stems carrying 9 to 10, placed in the upper 2/3's, oblong-lanceolate, bilobed apically, smooth leaves that blooms in the summer and fall on a terminal, short, racemose, subglomerose inflorescence with simultaneously opening flowers.

"Epidendrum anthropophorum belongs to the GROUP Andean SUBGROUP Anthropophorum recognized by the branching habit, bilobed leaves, adpressed sheaths and the 3-lobed, bicallose lip, and a subglomerulose inflorescence. The species is recognized by the subglomerulose inflorescence on a very short peduncle, white flowers and the lip with long lateral lobes and the bilobed, divaricate, shorter lobes of the midlobe, which, with the narrow, rectangular isthmus of the lip give it an anthropoid-like appearance. Specimens have been misidentified as Epidendrum scabrum Ruiz & Pavón or E. cuniculatum Schltr., the former having a long rachis and thus a cylindrical inflorescence; and an entire midlobe of lhe lip; and E. globiflorum F.Lehm . & Kraenzl., which has larger flowers with the sepals .24 to .28" [6 to 7 mm] long, and an ecallose lip, with an elevated midkeel forming a triangular structure on the disc, Epidendrum scabrum has tall plants with much larger leaves and a paniculate inflorescence, the midlobe rectangular. Epidendrum brachyanthum Hágsater & Dodson has flowers approximately the same size, but much smaller plants, with a different architecture, the stems short and produced in succession from a subapical internode of the previous stem, and the lateral lobes of the lip suborbicular, the midlobe quadrate and truncate." Hagsater etal 2006

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Bonplandia Rchb.f 1856; Repertorium Specierum Novarum Regni Vegetabilis 7: 244 Schlechter 1920; Bot Notiser 130 Lojtnant 1977; Icones Orchidacearum 8 Plate 807 Hagsater 2006 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum 8 Plate 807 Hagsater 2006 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum Vol 8 Plate 855 Hagsater & Sanchez 2006 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 9 Plate 906 Hagsater 2007 see Recognition Section; Orquideas, Tesoro de Colombia Vol 2 Ortiz & Uribe 2017;

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