Epidendrum smaragdinum Lindl. 1838 GROUP Smaragdinum TYPE for the group

Photo by © Colomborquideas

Drawing

Drawing by © Dunsterville & Garay and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

LATE

Common Name The Emerald Green Epidendrum

Flower Size .8" [2 cm]

Found in Venezuela, Guyana, French Guiana, Surinam, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru in wet tropical forests often in ants nests at elevations around 100 to 500 meters as a medium sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte or terrestrial with canelike, caespitose, straight stems enveloped by numerous, erect to subpendent, tubular, subflattened, imbricating, distichous, foliaceous sheaths and carrying several, alternate, chartaceous, stiff, narrowly ovate, red brown flecked leaves that blooms in the late fall and winter on a terminal, erect, short, successively few, several flowered inflorescence.

"Epidendrum smaragdinum Lindl. is part of GROUP Smaragdinum characterized, by the caespitose, sympodial habit the stem carrying many leaves of which the surface is parchment-like when dry, the thickened rachis and carrying small, successive, basaically green flowers. The speciecs from South America is recognized by the epiphytic and myrmecophilous or terrestrial plants with lanceolate to lanceolate-elliptic leaves, the short inflorescence, with a few, successive, very fleshy, green flowers, spotless, with the lip dearly 3-lobed, the midlobe entire and apiculate. E pachyrachis is vegetatively very similar, but the green flowers with the lip transversely elliptic to reniform, with radiating thickened veins at the truncate base, and three elongate central keels, the column short and bidentate at the apex. The terrestrial or lithophytic Epidendrum orchidflorum Salzm. has much taller plants, up to 100" [2.5 meters] tall, with a very long peduncle of the inflorescence, the flowers greenish with brown to purple dots, the lip clearly 3- lobed, with the midlobe deeply emarginate" Adapted from E pachyrachis Icones Plate 1152 Hagsater 2008

Synonyms Epidendrum kuhlmannii Hoehne 1912

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Orchids of Peru Vol 2 Fieldiana Schweinfurth 1959; Flora de Venezuela Vol XV Tercera Parte Foldats 1970 drawing fide; Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 5 Dunsterville & Garay 1972 drawing fide; Orchidaceae Brasilense Band 1 Pabst & Dungs 1975 drawing fide; Orchids of Venezuela, an Illustrated Field Guide Vol 1 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 drawing fide; Icones Plantarum Tropicarum Plate 488 Dodson 1989 drawing fide; Inventaire Taxominique des Plantes de la Guyane Francaise Vol II Les Orchidaceaes Cremers and Hoff 1992; Field Guide to the Orchids of Costa Rica and Panama Dressler 1993; Native Colombian Orchids vol 5 COS 1994 photo fide; Orchids of Venezuela [An illustrated field guide] Vol. 1 Ramiro and Carnevali 2000 drawing fide; Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana Vol 7 Steyermark, Berry, Yatskievych and Holst 2003; Orquideas de la Serrania del Baudo Cho Colombia Misas 2005 drawing/photo fide; Icones Orchidacearum 11 Plate 1152 Hagsater 2008 see recognition section; Orchids of French Guiana Szlachetko, Veyret, etal 2012 drawing fide; Orquideas mde Roirama Luz & Franco 2012 photo ok?; Orquideas, Tesoro de Colombia Vol 2 Ortiz & Uribe 2017 drawing/photo fide;

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