Encyclia calderoniae Soto Arenas 2003
Photo by © Eduardo A Perez Garcia and The I Naturalist Website
Drawing By © R Jimenez/Hagsater & Soto
Common Name Calderon's Encyclia [Mexican Botanist Current]
Flower Size 3/4" to 1" [2 to 2.5 cm]
Found in Oaxaca state of Mexico in dry oak forests, and humid pine/oak forests on trees or on granite boulders as a small sized, warm growing epiphyte or lithophyte with conic-ovoid to subspheric pseudobulbs enveloped partially in youth by thin, scarious sheaths and carrying a single, rarely a second, coriaceous-fleshy, ensiform to oblong-ligulate, obtuse, basally clasping leaf that blooms in the late spring on a terminal, paniculate, to 4 branched, 3 to 5 tubular, obtuse bracts, to 30" [75 cm] long, successively 10 to 40 flowered inflorescence arising on a mature pseudobulb with cymbidiform, widely ovate, obtuse, mucronate, scarious floral bracts.
This species is similar to Encyclia candollei but is found on the Pacific coast, is a smaller plant mostly with one leaf per pseudobulb, and has a less conspicuous arcuate column and the petals and the lateral lobes are not porrect and overlapping but embracing the column and slightly reflexed at the apices and the flowers usually exhibit rich chestnut to chocolate brown sepals and a pale yellow lip lined with purple.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Icones Orchidacearum 5-6 plate 558 Hagsater & Salazar 2002 drawing good
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