Epidendrum melinanthum Schltr. 1920 GROUP Secundum SUBGROUP Secundum
Photos by © Sebastian Moreno and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Common Name The Millet-Like Epidendrum
Flower Size 1.2" [3 cm]
Found in Ecuador and Colombia in disturbed open dry areas and steep slopes of premontane forests at elevations of 800 to 1500 meters as a large sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte or lithophyte with simple, terete, rigid, basally sheathed stems carrying erect-spreading, narrowly oblong, fleshy leaves that blooms in the fall, winter and spring on a terminal, elongate, subcorymbose-abbreviate, racemose, densely many flowered inflorescence enveloped by about 7 bracts and has erect-spreading, lanceolate, acuminate floral bracts.
"Epidendrum melinanthum is part of the GROUP Secundum SUBGROUP Secundum characterized by the caespitose habit, the numerous coriaceous leaves, the generally elongate peduncle to pluriracemose inflorescence with brightly colored flowers generally pollinated by hummingbirds, with the caudicles of the pollinarium granulose, and the tetrads appearing like a loose stack of roof tiles. The species is recognized by its terrestrial or lithophytic habit, distichous leaves, an apical inflorescence of numerous and successive non resupinate yellow flowers and by having 3 basal tubercles, a T shaped lip, with a deeply dentate margin, and the mid-lobe bifid, into two square, somewhat divergent lobes with a mucro in the sinus. Similar to Epidendrum aura-usecheae Hágsater, C. Rincón-Useche et O. Pérez also has yellow flowers but the margins of the lip deeply mbriate with the fimbria bent in all directions and a more complex callus represented by a structure of 12 to 14 unequal tubercles." ICONES COLOMBIANAE 1 Epidendrum melinanthum Moreno and Hagsater
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. Beih. 7: 139 Schlechter 1920; Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. Beih. 7: 249 Schlechter 1920; ; Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. Beih. Figuren-Atlas 57: 189 Schlechter 1929 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2001 photo fide; Icones Orchidacearum Vol 8 Plate 877 Hagsater & Sanchez 2006 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 14 Plate 1410 Hagsater & Santiago 2013 See recognition section; Orchids of the Department of Valle De Cauca Colombia Vol 2 Kolanowska, Hagsater etal. 2014 drawing fide/photo fide; Orquideas, Tesoro de Colombia Vol 2 Ortiz & Uribe 2017 drawing/photo fide; ICONES COLOMBIANAE 1 Epidendrum melinanthum Moreno and Hagsater; LANKESTERIANA 19(2).125 - 193 Ossenbach & Jenny 2019 drawing fide; Orquideas de Farallones de Cali Galindo-Tarazona, Haelterman, Zuluaga Trochez and Sebastian Moreno 2020 photo fide
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