Gastrodia theana Aver. 2005 Photo by Leonid Averyanov

Common Name or Meaning The Thean Gastrodia

Flower Size .28" to .4" [.7 to 1 cm]

Found in Vietnam in primary broadleaved evergreen lowland shady forest at eleavations of 300 to 400 meters as a mini-miniature sized, hot growing leafless, mycoheterotrophic terrestrial with cylindrical, finely irregularily verrucose, hairy tubers giving rise to an erect, fleshy, striaght to flexuous, white to yellowish-brown stem with 2 to 3, ovate, obtuse bracts and with many small, imbricate, triangular, acute scales that blooms in the spring on an erect, dense, 3 to 8 close set flowers with yellowish brown, ovate floral bracts and carryijng tubular, fleshy flowers that barely open

"The species [is] superficially similar to G. verrucosa Blume [which is] recorded from Japan, Malacca, Sumatra and Java, but distinctly differs in [the] very small, hardly visible narrowly-triangular free part of [the] petals and [the] cordate base of lip. This rare, probably strictly endemic plant is [a] typical element of the aboriginal warm-loving, lowland flora of [the] central part of Vietnam."

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Turczaninowia 2011, 14(2) : 15–100 Averyanov 2011 drawing/photo fide

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