Dendrochilum tortile H.A.Pedersen 2011 SUBGENUS Platyclinis SECTION Eurybrachium
Photos by Trey Sanders and his Dendrochilum Website
LATE
EARLY 
Common Name or Meaning The Twisted Dendrochilum [refers to the twisted rachis and the ovaries]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in the Philippines on Mindanao island without locational data as a small sized, tufted herb with tightly clustered, fusiform, widest at the base, longitudinally wrinkled-furrowed when dry paeudobulbs enveloped in youth by tubular, obtuse to acute, soon evanescent cataphyls and carrying a single, apical, erect, convolute, dorsiventrally flattened, petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on a synanthous, racemose, peduncle suberect, arched, 6.52" [16.8 cm] long, slender, subterete, sparsely and finely setose [especially towards the base], rachis pendent, 6.8" [17 cm] long, distichously alternating flowers, rachis axis twisted so as to produce a terete rachis, densely many flowered inflorescence with a single, adpressed, non-floriferous bract. Flowering begins from the central part of the inflorecence and then works out to both ends. The floral bracts are lanceolate-oblong to elliptic to ovate when spread, acute to acuminate, entire, 10 to 12 nerved, finely and sparsely setose floral bracts
"D tortile is reminscent of the Philippine endemic D convallariaeforme but D tortile is distinguished by the larger, non-resupinate flowers with glabrous sepals and relatively wider petals, by the shorter apical wing of the column and by the spreading stelida. Vegetatively it is very similar to D septemnervium from which it differs in several floral characters." Pedersen 2011 Malesian Orchid Journal Vol 7
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Malesian Orchid J. 7: 121 Pedersen 2011 photo/drawing fide
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