Habenaria modesta Dalzell 1850

Drawing by Jorge Roberto González Tamayo and Las Orquideas del Occidente de Mexico Vol 1 Jorge Roberto González Tamayo y Lizbeth Hernández Hernández 2010

partial shade Cool LATESummer EARLY Fall

Common Name The Glandular Habenaria [refers to its glandular parts of the flowers or the entire inflorescence]

Flower Size

Found in Jalisco, México, Michoacán, Morelos, Oaxaca, and most likely in Durango, Guerrero, Nayarit and Sinaloa states of Mexico on roadside banks, in ravines or slopes in open pine forest and oak, subdeciduous tropical forest and on the banks of streams, in porous, clayey or sandy soils, humiferous at elevations of 1100 a 1800 meters as a miniature to medium sized, cool growing terrestrial with a small, ellipsoid or subspherical tuber giving rise to an erect, leafy throughout stem carrying 8 or so, cauline, more or less equidistant, the largest are found in the middle part of the plant, then the lamina decreases, the first one is reduced to a sheath without a blade, those above to half the plant resemble floral bracts; arched plate, extended, poorly conduplicate or flat, lanceolate to ovate, acute to acuminate, 1 to 2" [2.5 to 5 cm] long, .6" [1.5 cm] wide, dark green above, silvery on the underside, furrowed carnate, in essence trinervia, the hyaline margins, the sheaths oppress the stem, overlapping, relatively long, somewhat dilated at the apex leaves that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, terminal, peduncle angular, rachis cylindrical, lax cluster, , around 2.4" [6 cm] in length, wider than the distance between the apices of the leaves; usually with a few flowered inflorescence conduplicate, somewhat twisted, rounded, ovate-deltoid, acute, subapiculate or with an acumen short, trinerved, the lateral nerves simple or bifurcated, fleshy, shorter that the ovary floral bracts.

Differs form the similar Habenaria crassicornis by the lack of glandular puberulence of the various parts of the flower and often the entire inflorescence.

Synonyms Habenaria ovalifolia Wight 1851; Habenaria platantheropsis Kraenzl. 1900

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Hooker's J. Bot. Kew Gard. Misc. 2: 262 Dalzell 1850;

Icon. Pl. Ind. Orient. 5: t. 1708 Wight 1851 as H ovalifolia drawing fide; First published in Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 28: 172 Kraenzlin 1900 as Habenaria platantheropsis

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