Epidendrum pallidiflorum Hook. 1830 GROUP Mutelianum
Plant and flowers in situ St Lucia
Photos by © Roger Graveson and his The Plants of Saint Lucia Webpage
Photos by Carol Garvey courtesy of Stewart Chipka
LATE 
Common Name The Pale Flowered Epidendrum
Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]
Found in the Leeward and Windward Islands at elevations of 650 to 1300 meters in elfin cloud forests as a large sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte or terrestrial with an erect or ascending, slender, terete, distally compressed stem enveloped completely by sheaths and carrying many, rigid, coriaceous, narrowly elliptic, acute leaves and blooms in the late spring and summer on a terminal, suberect, subdensely few to many flowered, to 9 3/4" [24 cm] long, racemose to paniculate inflorescence with triangular, acuminate floral bracts and carrying slightly fragrant flowers.
"Epidendrum pallidiflorum Hooker, belongs to the GROUP Mutelianum characterized by the sympodial habit, simple stems, apical, paniculate inflorescence subtended by several imbricating bracts, 3-lobed lip and the petals as wide or wider than the sepals. The species has greenish cream flowers with purple lines and a longer peduncle of the inflorescence which is more than 4" [10 cm] long. The species is very similar to the next 2 species. Epidendrum boricuomutelianum can be recognized by the caespitose habit, 3 to 5, narrowly elliptic leaves distributed towards the apex of the laterally compressed stems, erect racemose to paniculate inflorescence with the pedunde shorter than the apical leaf and the orange-yellow, cleistogamous flowers, the lip 3-lobed with the midlobe triangular, rounded. It is similar to Epidendrum mutelianum which nas cream colored flowers, the apex of the column somewhat tinged purple and found on the lesser Antillies. They are somewhat similar to Epidendrum patens Sw., which has a similar peduncle 4" [10 cm] long, subrhombic, white flowers with purplé dots at the base of the lip and the apex of the column, and the lip bilobed at the apex, the lobes divergent." Adapted from E boricuomutelianum Icones 7 plate 711 Hagsater etal 2004
Synonyms Amphiglottis pallidiflora (Hook.) Britton 1924; Epidendrum mutelianum var. mirabilis Stehlé 1939
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Symbolae Antillanae Vol VI Orchidaceae Urban 1909; Die Orchideen Schlechter 1915; Atlas des Orchidees Cultivees Constantin 1920 drawing fide; Catalogo Descriptivo de las Orquideas Cubanas Acuna 1938 as Amphiglottis pallidiflora; Flore Descriptive des Antilles Francaises H. Stehle 1939 drawing hmm; Flora of the Lesser Antilles Garay & Sweet 1974 drawing fide; Orchidaceae Antillanae Nir 2000; Icones Orchidacearum 7 plate 711 Hagsater & Salazar 2004 see recognition section;
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