Epidendrum portoricense Hágsater & Ackerman 1999 GROUP Nocturnum

TYPE Drawing by © R Jimenez M and The AMO Herbaria Website

LATE EARLY

Common Name The Puerto Rico Epidendrum

Flower Size 3.6” [9 cm]

Found in Puerto Rico and Cuba in moist wet forests on trees and rocks at elevations of 270 to 780 meters as a medium sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte or lithophyte with cane-like, laterally compressed above, terete basally, simple, erect stems carrying 1 to 7, along the apical half of the stem, coriaceous, narrowly oblong-elliptic, obtuse, slightly dorsally carinate, progressively larger above except for the ultimate 2 which are smaller, dark green leaves that blooms in the late spring and early summer on a terminal, without a spathe, pluriracemose, successively single, few flowered inflorescence with much shorter than the ovary, triangular, clasping floral bracts and carrying resupinate flowers with green to yellowish tepals and a white lip and column.

"Epidendrum portoricense belongs to the GROUP Nocturnum which has large, successive, star-shaped flowers, the lip usually 3-lobed, on simple stems. The species is recognized by the strongly compressed stems, elongate leaves, usually 5 to 7 times longer than broad, the ovary 3.2 to .46" [80 to 115 mm] long and the body of the capsule displaced somewhat beyond the middle of the ovary. Epidendrum nocturnum has shorter leaves on terete stems, the ovary shorter, 1.6 to 2.48" [45 to 62 mm] long, and the body of the capsule in the center, occupying most the of the length of the ovary. Epidendrum angustilobum Fawc. & Rendle 1909 also has compressed stems, but the leaves are relatively wider, usually 2 to 3 times longer than broad, the ovary is 4.48 to 7.2" [11.2 to 18 cm] long, twice as long as the sepals or longer, and the body of the capsule is clearly beyond the middle of the ovary. Epidendrum tridens Poeppig & Endlicher, from the Amazon basin has a short, thick ovary 2.4 to 4" x .16 to .2" [60 to to 100 x 4 to 5 mm], leaves 4 times longer than broad, and the body of the capsule in the middle of the ovary." Hagsater etal 1999

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Orchidacearum 3 Plate 376 Hágsater & Ackerman 1999 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum 11 plate 1102 Hagsater & Soto 2008 see recognition section;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------