Epidendrum guagra-urcuense Hágsater & Dodson 2001 GROUP Andean SUBGROUP Cernuum

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

Common Name or Meaning The Guagra-Urcu Epidendrum [A mountain in northern Ecuador]

Flower Size .8" [2 cm]

Found in northern Ecuador in montane forests at elevations around 2600 meters as a large sized, cold growing epiphyte with erect, cane-like, laterally compressed, ancipitose stems carrying numerous, lanceolate to elliptic, unequally bilobed, retuse leaves that blooms in the winter on a terminal, on the mature main stem, occuring only once, racemose, arching, semispherical, 2.6" [6.5 cm] long including the reduced, terete, nude peduncle, simultaneously 12 flowered inflorescence with much shorter than the ovary, triangular, acute floral bracts and carrying resupinate, yellowish flowers.

"Epidendrum guagra-urcuense belongs to the GROUP Andean SUBGROUP Cernuum, characterized by the monopodial habit, cane-like stems with subapical branches which are considerably shorter than the main stem, coriaceous to sub-coriaceous leaves, and fleshy flowers, the lip entire or 3-lobed. The species is recognized by the branching stems, the bilobed leaves, 3-lobed pandurate lip, the small triangular-rounded lateral lobes, the midlobe obcuneate-rectangular, the apex 3-lobed, the clinandrium prominent, funnel-shaped and erose-fimbriate, the inflorescence is short and few-flowered. Epidendrum cernuum Kunth also has aristate sepals, but many more, delicate, small flowers with sepals .24 to .52" [6 to 13 mm], giving the inflorescence a fox-tail appearance, the lip is 3-lobed but not pandurate, with the midlobe cuneate and apiculate. Epidendrum brevicernuum Hágsater & Dodson has petals 3-veined and clinandrium short, entire, and the lobes of the lip subequal. Epidendrum pseudocernuum Carnevali & 1. Ramírez has small, falcate lateral lobes of the lip. Hagsater etal 2001

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Orchidacearum 4 Plate 421 Hagsater 2001 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 4 Plate 441 Hagsater & Dodson 2001 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum 7 Plate 794 Hagsater and Sanchez 2004 see recognition section;

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