Epidendrum werffii Dodson & Hágsater 1989 GROUP Difforme

TYPE Drawing by © Morejon

THROUGH

Common Name Werff's Epidendrum [Dutch Botanist with Missouri Botanical Garden current]

Flower Size 4.8" [12 cm]

Found in Esmeraldas province of Ecuador near the Colombian border at elevations of 700 to 850 meters as a medium sized, warm growing epiphyte with simple, cane-like, laterally compressed, erect stems enveloped by 10 to 15, imbricating, distichous, foliaceous sheaths and carrying 6 to 8, all along the stem, coriaceous, oblong-elliptic, obtuse, bilobed apically, articulate leaves that blooms in the spring through fall on a terminal, erect, sub-sessile, successively over various seasons, 1 to 2, few flowered inflorescence with much shorter than the ovary, ovate floral bracts and carrying pale green resupinate flowers.

"Epidendrum werffii belongs to the GROUP Difforme which is characterized by the caespitose, sympodial plants, fleshy, pale green to glaucous leaves, apical inflorescence, sessile, rarely with a short peduncle, one-flowered to corymbose, without spathaceous bracts, fleshy, green to yellowish-green rarely white flowers. The species can be recognized by its laterally compressed stems, coriaceous ochre-green leaves, 1 to 2 large, green, star-like flowers, floral segments very long, sepals .48 to .36" [84 to 90 mm] long, linear-lanceolate, lip entire, narrowly lanceolate, acuminate, ecallose; clinandrium-hood prominent, conical, erose. It is found sympatric with Epidendrum williamsii Dodson and without flowers nearly impossible to distinguish from it, but that species has much smaller flowers with sepals .4 to .6" [10 to 15 mm] long with very differently shaped segments." Hagsater etal 2010

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Icones Plantarum Tropicarum Plate 492 Dodson & Hagsater 1989 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum 13 Plate 1398 Hagsater & Sanchez 2010 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum 13 Plate 1399 Hagsater & Santiago 2010 See recognition section;

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