Epidendrum podostylos Hágsater & Dodson 1993 GROUP Diothonea SUBGROUP Diothonea

TYPE Drawing by © Jimenez and The AMO Herbaria Website

Common Name The Prominent Column Foot Epidendrum

Flower Size .8” [2 cm]

Found in Ecuador at elevations around 3000 meters as a medium sized, cold growing, caespitose terrestrial with branched, cane-like, terete stems carrying numerous, 7 to 18 on every branch, on mature branches only 3 to 4 apical leaves may be present, subcoriaceous, narrowly lanceolate, bilobed, aristate, margin entire leaves that blooms in the winter on a terminal, without a spathe, erect, on the mature branches, occuring only once, racemose, nutant, peduncle terete, naked, 2 to 2.4” [5 to 6 cm] long, simultaneously 10 to 11 flowered inflorescence with much shorter than the ovary, partly amplexicaul, narrowly triangular floral bracts and carrying resupinate flowers with yellow-green sepals with red stripes on the outside and the back of the column.

"Epidendrum podostylos is part of GROUP Diothonea SUBGROUP Diothonea characterized by the branching plants linear-lanceolate to oblong leaves the apex bilobed, racemose, arching-nutant inflorescence, membranaceous, rarely fleshy flowers, the entire to 3-lobed, ecallose lip with the margin erose and with or without 1 to 10 thin, smooth to erose keels, the column completely free to obliquely united to the lip, the anther reniform. The species is recognized by the branching habit, with narrowly lanceolate leaves .16 to .28" [4 to 7 mm] wide, and the nutant raceme with yellowish flowers somewhat striped with red. The column is wide-open ventrally and with a very prominent column foot, with the lip mostly free, suborbicular, emarginate and six-keeled. It is most similar to E. lloense (Lindl.) Hágsater & Dodson, but in that species there are 3 laminar, erose keels on the lip, the column foot is not as large, and the leaves are about .48" [1.2 cm] wide." Hagsater etal 1993

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Orchidacearum 2 Plate 175 Hagsater & Dodson 1993 drawing fide;

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