Epidendrum bonitense Hágsater & Dodson 1993 GROUP Nanum

TYPE Drawing by © Jimenez, Hágsater & E.Santiago and The AMO Herbario Website

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Common Name The La Bonita Epidendrum [refers to the locality in Sucumbios province, Ecuador of the type species]

Flower Size .8" [2 cm]

Found in north central Ecuador in wet montane forests at elevations around 2000 meters as a miniature to small sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with a pendent, simple, cane-like, branching from the apex of the previous stem or from the middle in older plants, laterally compressed stem enveloped completely by imbricating, evanescent, ancipitous sheaths and carrying all along the stem, grayish green, subcoriaceous-succulent, distichous, ovate, acute, slightly oblique leaves that blooms in the later spring and early summer on a terminal, racemose, hanging, 1" [2.5 cm] long, few flowered inflorescence arising through an acute, conduplicate, oblique, semiovate, margin apically minutely dentate spathe and with much shorter than the ovary floral bracts that are enveloped completely by the spathes and carrying 2, simultaneously opening, resupinate, glaucous green flowers with a faint purple tinge.

"Epidendrum bonitense belongs to the 1993 GROUP Nanum characterized by the dichaea-like pendant stems with pairs of apposing flowers on an inflorescence without spathaceous bracts and has prominent floral bracts. The species is closely related to Epidendrum milenae Dodson & R.Vásquez 1989, from which can be distinguished by the larger flowers with the sepals being .48 to [12 mm] long, the subrectangular, acute, twice as long as wide lip, and the somewhat different coloring of the anther. Epidendrum bonitense was found sympatric with the similar E. thelephorum Hágsater & Dodson, which is smaller, with the midlobe of the lip ovate, rounded, and the anther prominently papillose. This group of species has been little studied, and further work in the field will certainly produce other undescribed species. The vegetative habit is that of a caespitose plant which also produces new stems from near the apex of the previous stem, a feature typical of this group of species." Hagsater etal 1993

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Icones Orchidaceaum 2 Plate 113 Hagsater & Salazar 1993 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum 3 Plate 351 Hagsater & Sanchez 1999 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 3 Plate 388 Hagsater 1999 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 4 Plate 448 Hagsater 2001 see recognition section; Orquideas, Tesoro de Colombia Vol 2 Ortiz & Uribe 2017 as E aff bonitense photo fide; Icones Orchidacearum 16[2] Plate 1691 Hagsater & Sanchez 2018 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 17(1) Plate 1711 Hagsater & Jimenez 2019 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 17(1) Plate 1729 Hagsater & Jimenez 2019 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 17(1) Plate 1755 Hagsater & Jimenez 2019 see recognition section;

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