Habenaria engleriana Kraenzl. 1893 SECTION Plantagineae
Photo by © Dominic Bonardi
TYPE Drawing by © Kraenzlin
LATER 
EARLY
Common Name Engler's Habenaria [German Botanist 1844 to 1930]
Flower Size 1.6" [3.5 cm]
Found in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria and Cameroon, in the understory of forests at elevations of 600 to 1500 meters as a medium to large sized, warm to cool growing terrestrial with large, pubescent, tuberous roots giving rise to an erect, annual, leafy stem carrying broadly oblong, scute, larger in the medium third, more or less wavy margins, sheathing below into the base leaves that blooms in the later summer and early fall on an erect, terminal, 4 to 10 flowered inflorescence with lanceolate, acute, clasping the pedicel floral bracts and carrying white tinted with green flowers.
Differs from many in the section by the densely leafy stem, with the longest spurs on very beautiful white flowers with green stigmas. Plant habit is similar to H leonensis. Rolfe 1918 states that the large flowers resemble Pectilis susanae
Synonyms Habenaria hunteri Rolfe 1918; Plantaginorchis engleriana (Kraenzl.) Szlach. 2004
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 17: 68 Kraenzlin 1893
* Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 17: 68 Kraenzlin 1893 drawing fide;
Bull. Misc. Inform. Kew 1918: 238 Rolfe 1918 as H hunteri;
Les Orchidees de Cote d'Ivorie Perez-Vera 2003 photo/drawing fide;
Richardiana 4: 64 Szlach 2004 as Plantaginorchis engleriana
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