!Veyretella hetaerioides (Summerh.) Szlach. & Olszewski 1998 Drawing by © Le Testu and The Kew Botanic Gardens Website

Common Name The Hetaeria-Like Veyretella

Flower Size .6" [1.5 cm]

Found in Gabon in primary forests as a mini-miniature sized terrestrial with elongate rhizomes and fleshy roots that give rise to an erect, glabrous, leafy stem carying 5 to 8, gathered in a basal rosette, broadly lanceolate, to lanceolate, acute, asymentric, thin, petiolate base leaves that blooms in the late winter spring and early summer on an erect, terminal, racemose, glabrous, 1.2" [3 cm] long, loosely 3 to 5 flowered inflorescence with leaf-like bracts.

"This remarkable little species, which bears a strong resemblance vegetatively to the Acrotonous genera Hetaeria and Zeuxina,is characterised by the relatively large spathe-like broadly obovate bracts and by the single opened flower being horizontally placed with the lip uppermost. The shape of the lip is also remarkable, the reniform middle lobe being many times larger than the basally placed lateral lobes which diverge at right angles and have the dorsal margin broken up into teeth, the longer ones of which are placed apically. The three lobes of the rostellum all project forwards in the same plane, the middle lobe bearing a sort of mound-like callus on the dorsal surface between the two anther-loculi. This rostellum structure is reminiscent of many species of Cynorchis but the stigmata appear to be free from the rostellum and in other respects the plant shows little similarity to that genus; for instance, it is entirely devoid of the glandular hairs so characteristic of Cynorkis." Summerhayes 1938

Synonyms Cynorkis hetaerioides (Summerh.) Szlach. 1995; *Habenaria hetaerioides Summerh. 1938; Cynorkis hetaerioides (Summerh.) Szlach. 1995

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

Bull. Misc. Inform. Kew 1938: 147 Summerhayes 1938 as H hetaeroides Flora of Madagascar Perrier 1939/85 drawing good; Rudolf Schlechter Die Orchideen Band 1C lieferung 40 pg 2492 - 2564 Brieger 2000 drawing fide; Flore du Gabon Vol 36 Szlachetko etal 2004 drawing fide; Field Guide to the Orchids of Madagascar Cribb & Hermans 2009 photo fide

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