Epidendrum viridipurpureum Hooker 1838 GROUP Pseudepidendrum SUBGROUP Viridipurpureum
Drawing by Hooker and the Botanical Magazine
LATE
Common Name The Green-Purple Epidpendrum
Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]
Found in Jamaica in moist and wet broadleaf forests at elevations of 600 to 950 meters as a medium sized, warm growing epiphyte with simple, cane-like, terete, erect stems carrying 6 to 8, all along the stem, smooth, coriaceous, entire, elliptic-lanceolate, obtuse to bilobed, unequal leaves that blooms in the winter through late spring on a terminal, without a spathe, erect, arising on mature stem, occuring only once, peduncle slightly flattened, with 2 unequal, spathe like, conduplicate, obtuse to acute, tubular bracts, the raceme, arcuate, to 7.2" [18 cm] long, 6 to 17 flowered inflorescence and shorter than the ovary, triangular, acuminate floral bracts and carrying odorless, resupinate flowers.
This orchid has often been cited as a synonym of E anceps from the GROUP Anceps SUBGROUP Anceps but this one differs in the coriaceous, unequal, rounded leaves, the half open green flowers with bronze purple and the brick red disc of the labellum and is a close relative of E nutans in the GROUP Pseudepidendrum SUBGROUP Viridipurpureum .
Synonyms Epidendrum fuscatum var. viridipurpureum (Hook.) Lindl. 1853; Epidendrum nutans var. obtusifolium Fawc. & Rendle 1910; Epidendrum tomlinsonianum C.D.Adams 1966
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum 2 Plate 187 Hagaster and Sanchez 1993 see recognition section
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