Epidendrum alieniferum Karremans & Bogarín 2012 GROUP Difforme
Photos © by Karremans and The Epidendra Website
Common Name The Alien Carrying Epidendrum [an allusion to the flower being alien shaped]
Flower Size 1.6" [4 cm]
Found in Costa Rica in premontane wet forests at elevations around 1400 meters as a small sized, cool growing epiphyte with erect, simple, cane-like, terete, somewhat flattened stems carrying about 4 to 9, all along the stem, elliptic, obtuse, succulent, smooth, basally conduplicate leaves that blooms in the spring on a terminal, short, corymbose, 4 to 10, simultaneously flowered inflorescence with acute, much shorter than the ovary floral bracts.
"Epidendrum alieniferum belongs to the GROUP Difforme which is characterized by the caespitose, sympodial plants, fleshy, pale green to glaucous leaves, apical inflorescence, sessile, rarely with a short peduncle, single to many-flowered, and then corymbose, without spathaceous bracts, fleshy, green to yellowish-green rarely white flowers. The species is distinguished by the terete stems, 4 to 10 simultaneous flowers, sepals .8 to .88" x .4 to-48" [20 to 22 x 10 to 12 mm], the column constricted and bent in the middle, the prominent, lacerate, funnel-shaped clinandrium-hood and the lip with margins crenulate and sides revolute to give it an anthropomorphic shape. Epidendrum lagenocolumna Hágsater & L.Sánchez has smaller flowers with the sepals .52 to .72" [13 to 18 cm] long, the linear petals, the margin of the lip entire, the base of the column making it just a somewhat wider, clinandrium obsolete. Epidendrum firmum Rchb.f. is also similar, however it is much smaller in both plant and flower size with the sepals .52 to .16" [13 to 14 mm] long, has linear petals, the margin of the lip sinuous, is not thickened at the base of the column and does not have such a prominent erect lacerate clinandrium, with the prominent and elongate, very divergent, fleshy, acute calli." Hagsaer etal 2013
Synonyms
ReferencesW3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Lankesteriana 12(1): 27 Karremans & Bogarín 2012 photo/drawing fide; Icones Orchidaceaerum 14 Plate 1402 Hagsater 2013 drawing fide;
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