Eria bicolor Lindl.1830 SECTION Pinalia

Photo by © Wilfried Löderbusch

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Common Name The Two-Colored Eria - Ceylon - The Lily of the Valley Orchid

Flower Size .92" [2.3 cm]

Found in southern India and Sri Lanka in marshy, elfin forest with a dense understory of bamboo at elevations around 1000 to 1200 meters as a small to medium sized, cool growing epiphyte with thick, fleshy, purplish-brown, fusiform, many noded, smooth in youth, longitudinally wrinkled with age, cylindrical pseudobulbs enveloped by brown, papery sheaths and carrying 2 to 3, apical, in a cluster, acute to obtuse, linear-lanceolate, apiculate, 5 veined, thinly coriaceous, shiny on the upper surface, many veined leaves that blooms in the later winter and early spring and early fall on an axillary, erect, puberulous, peduncle .32" [8 mm] long, deep purple, 1.2 to 2" [3 to 5 cm] long rachis, many flowered inflorescence with ovate, acuminate, acute, 5 or more veined floral bracts bell shaped, sweetly scented flowers.

Synonyms Pinalia bicolor (Lindl.) Kuntze 1891

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Orchid Culture in Ceylon and the East Price 1918; Die Orchideen lieferung 11/12 Schlechter/Brieger 1981 photo plant only; A Revised Handbook to the Flora of Ceylon Dassanayake & Fosberg 1981 drawing fide; Orchids Travel By Air A Pictoral Safari Mulder, Mulder-Roelfsema and Schuiteman 1990 photo fide;

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