Vanilla dressleri Soto Arenas 2010 SUBGENUS Xanata SECTION Xanata

Photo by © Karremans and The Epidendra Website

Common Name Dressler's Vanilla [American Botanist in Panama current]

Flower Size 5.5" [13 cm]

Found in Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia in lowland and submontane wet forests at elevations of 20 to 1000 meters as a large sized, hot to warm growing viney, climbing hemiepiphytic orchid with a flexuous, terete, grooved stem carrying many, oblanceolate, obovate to narrowly elliptic, sometimes slightly oblique, acuminate-cuspidate, fleshy, conspicuously pendent, basally rounded to attenuate into the canaliculate petiolate base leaves that blooms in the spring on a peduncle .6 to 1.4" [1.5 to 3.5 cm] long, rachis .6 to 1.72" [1.5 to 4.3 cm] long, successively single, 3 to 10 flowered inflorescence with patent, spreading, concave, widely ovate to elliptic, obtuse floral bracts and carrying fragrant flowers scented of clove.

"This large-flowered species is a member of the V. hostmanii group. Among the group, it is distinguished by the rather lax inflorescence, with distant flowers (c. 1 cm apart), patent bracts, subentire lip, with a subrhombic blade, and very scarcely papillose sepals; V. cribbiana, V. hostmanii and V. ruiziana have conspicuously granulose sepals. From V. cribbiana it is additionally distinguished by the narrower, thinner leaves which are more long acuminate-cuspidate, laxer inflorescences, less defined apical lobe, veins of the disc more conspicuously thickened, and flowering time mostly in March-May, not in JulyAugust. Vanilla hostmanii from Amazonia has very long inflorescences which bear much more flowers (e.g. 16 to 25" [40-50 cm] and the leaves are larger, thicker, not as acuminate-cuspidate. Vanilla ruiziana, from Peru and Bolivia has larger, broader, less acuminate-cuspidate, and thicker leaves, but is similar to V. dressleri in their rather elevated axial keels of the lip. Vanilla gardneri from Brazil has a subacute lip apex and oblong leaves, not cuspidate." Soto Arenas & Cribb 2010

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Lankesteriana 9(3): 303-305, f. 5. Dressler 2010 Drawaing /photo fide; Lankesteriana 9(3): 355-398 Soto Arenas & Cribb 2010

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