Vanilla chamissonis Klotzsch 1846 SUBGENUS Xanata SECTION Xanata
Photo by © Mauro Peixoto
Photos by Alejandro Taborda.
Photo by Jay Pfahl.
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Common Name Chamisso's Vanilla [French Hugenot Poet in 1800's]
Flower Size 4" [10 cm]
Found in Bolivia, southern Brazil and Argentina on or around palms as a giant sized, hot to cool growing epiphyte or terrestrial at elevations of 1 to 350 meters with scandent, elongate stems carrying fleshy, pale green, oblong, acute, narrowing below into the conduplicate clasping base leaves that blooms in the later spring to early summer on an axillary, racemose, short, successively several flowered inflorescence
CAUTION The flower on the left above is V planifolia for a comparison to V chamissonis
The in situ plant photo is from Boia Ceia', Sao Paulo State, Brazil at an elevation of 2 meters in the first scrub hammock on the beach on trunks and limbs of small trees with lichen.
"Two different taxa have been called V. chamissonis in recent times. The true V. chamissonis has a very long midlobe of the lip (e.g. drawings of Portères, 1954, fig. 104; Martius, 1986, t. 32 or Hoehne’s illustration of V. chamissonis var. longifolia); the other one is V. vellozii, reduced by most recent authors to a variety of the former. Vanilla chamissonis is similar to the V. calyculata from Colombia and Central America. Vanilla vellozii is different in its shorter segments and subentire lip, and it is not clear if it is a member of the V. chamissonis or V. pompona complexes." Soto Arenas & Cribb 2010
Synonyms Vanilla chamissonis var. brevifolia Cogn. 1893;
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Flora Brasilica Vol XII II Hoehne 1945 as V argentina drawing fide; Flora Brasilica Vol XII II Hoehne 1945 drawing fide; Flora Brasilica Vol XII II Hoehne 1945 as V chamissionis var longifolia drawing fide; Flora Brasilica Vol XII II Hoehne 1945 as V chamissonis var brevifolia drawing fide; Iconografia de Orchidaceae Do Brasil Hoehne 1949 drawing fide; Orchidaceae Brasilenses Band 1 Pabst & Dungs 1975 drawing fide; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Series II Orchids of Bolivia plate 0395 Dodson & Vasquez 1989 drawing fide; Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana Vol 7 Steyermark, Berry, Yatskievych and Holst 2003; Orchids of The Brazilian Central Plateau Menezes 2004 photo fide; Lankesteriana 9(3): 355-398 Soto Arenas & Cribb 2010; AOS Bulletin Vol 80 #5 2011 photo fide;
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