Epidendrum thermophilum Hágsater & Dodson 1993 GROUP Secundum SUBGROUP Secundum
TYPE Drawing by © Jimenez and The AMO Herbaria Website
Common Name The Hot Growing Epidendrum
Flower Size .8" [2 cm]
Found in northern Ecuador very near the Colombian Border at elevations around 910 meters as a giant sized, warm growing epiphyte with simple, cane-like, erect, terete, straight to somewhat flexuous stems carrying all along the apical 1/2 to 3/4's of the stem, ovoid, bilobed, coriaceous leaves that blooms in the summer on a terminal, arising on a mature stem, erect, long-pedunculate, racemose, sub-corymbose, pluri-racemose, successively 10, many flowered inflorescence triangular, acuminate, much shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying non-resupinate, non-fragrant, reddish-purple flowers with the base of the segments darker.
"Epidendrum thermophilum GROUP Secundum SUBGROUP Secundum Characterized as a subgroup by the bicallose lip with a central, narrow, long, wavy keel, the column is apically high and the anther is generally decumbent. The species is characterized by the very stout, tall plants with firm, coriaceous, purple marked leaves, and reddish-purple, non-resupinate flowers with three-lobed, fimbriate lip with two yellow calli and a laminar keel running down the middle. The only other species with this combination of features is Epidendrum flexuosum G. Mey. 1818 an epiphytic species always found in ant nests or associated in some manner with ants, which has lorate leaves and entire lip with margins laciniate only below the middle. All the other species with non-resupinate flowers in the GROUP Secundum SUBGROUP Secundum have a complex, tuberculate callus." Hagsater etal 1993
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Orchidacearum 2 Plate 193 Hagsater & Dodson 1993 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum 7 Plate 761 Hagsater and Sanchez 2004 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 16[1} Plate 1659 Hagsater & Sanchez 2018 See recognition section;
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