!Cranichis muscosa Sw. 1788
Photo © by Prem Subrahmanyam and his The Florida Native Blog
Photo by © Mark Nir and Orchidaceae Antillianae
to
EARLY 
Common Name The Moss-Loving Cranichis
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Florida, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Bahamas, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Leewards, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, Windwards, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil in wet montane forests on damp shady banks at elevations of 200 to 2950 meters as a miniature sized, cool to hot growing terrestrial herb occuring with a basal rosette of up to 7, elliptic to ovate-elliptic, acute to subobtuse, light to medium green leaves with conduplicate petioles that blooms in the fall, winter and early spring on a terminal, erect, to 12" [30 cm] long, stout, purple-green, glabrous scape with leaf-like sheaths ending in a subdensly, many flowered inflorescence with successively opening, non-resupinate, glabrous flowers.
Distinguished by the foliaceous peduncle, the glabrous ovary, the lip with a membraneous margin, the disc of the lip 3 nerved, papillose-verrucoe, the single nerved, linear-oblong petals that are minutely ciliate on the m argin, the single nerved dorsal sepal, the cucullate, concave, oblong-elliptic lip with the disc ballooned out from the base to the apical 1/3.
Synonyms Cranichis bradei Schltr. 1922;
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Symbolae Antillanae Vol VI Orchidaceae Urban 1909; Flora of Jamaica Fawcett & Rendle 1910; Catologo Descriptivo de las Orquideas Cubanas Acuna 1938; Flore Descriptive des Antilles Francaises H. Stehle 1939 drawing good; Flora Brasilica Vol XII II 13-43 Hoehne 1945 as C bradei drawing good; Flora Brasilica Vol XII II 13- 43 Hoehne 1945; Iconografia de Orchidaceae Do Brasil Hoehne 1949 as C bradei drawing fide; The Orchids of Panama L.O. Williams & P Allen 1946 drawing good; Orchids of Peru Vol 1 Schweinfurth 1958; Native Orchids of Trinidad Schultes 1960; Encyclopedia of Cultivated Orchids Hawkes 1965 drawing ok; Venezuelan Orchids Vol 4 Dunsterville & Garay 1966 drawing fide; Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 1 1969 drawing fide; The Native Orchids of Florida Luewr 1972 drawing/photo fide; Flora of the Lesser Antilles Garay & Sweet 1974 drawing fide; Orchidaceae Brasilenses Band 1 Pabst & Dungs 1975 as C bradei drawing good; Flora of Ecuador No 9 225[1] Garay 1978; Orchids of Venezuela, An Illustrated Field Guide Vol 1 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 drawing fide; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 367 Dodson 1980 drawing fide; Field Guide to Orchids of North America Williams 1983 drawing fide; Orchids of Guatemala and Belize Ames and Correll 1985; The Manual of Cultivated Orchids Bechtel, Cribb, Launert 1992 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 Dodson 1993 drawing fide; Field Guide to the Orchids of Costa Rica and Panama Dressler 1993; An Orchid Flora Of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Ackerman 1995 drawing ok; Orchids of Jamaica Gloudon & Tobisch 1995 photo fide; Orchids of Venezuela [An illustrated field guide] Vol. 1 Ramiro and Carnevali 2000 drawing fide; Orchidaceae Antillanae Nir 2000 photo fide; Genera Orchidacearum Vol 3 Orchioideae Part 2 Pridgeon, Cribb, Chase and Rasmusen 2003 drawing good; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Hammel, Grayum,Herrera and Zamora 2003; AOS Bulletin Vol 73 No 11 2004 photo fide; Flora Of Ecuador # 76 225[2] Dodson & Luer 2005; The Orchids of Cuba Llamacho & Larramendi 2005 photo fide; Vanishing Beauty, Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 1 Pupulin 2005 photo good; AOS Bulletin Vol 77 no 1 2008 photo fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014; Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 1 Ortiz & Uribe 2014 drawing fide; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018
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