Helleriella guerrerensis Dressler & Hágsater 1975 Photo by © R Jenny and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

Drawing Drawing by © R Jimenez and Soto

Common Name The Guerrero Helleriella [A State of Mexico]

Flower Size 1 to 1.2" [2.5 to 3 cm]

Found in Guerrero state of Mexico on calcareous and granote cliffs in montane rainforests and elfin forests at elevations of 1800 to 2400 meters as a giant sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte or lithophyte with erect to hanging, often with shorter, flattened adventichous branches, leafy all along stems, older stems enveloped by leaf sheths and older yet naked except with leaves at the apex, carrying distichous, twisted so as to all lie in one plane parellel to the stem, unequally bilobed apcially, obtuse and amplexicaul below, green, sulcate above, carinate beneath, artuclate to the sheaths leaves that blooms in the fall on apical and lateral, at times all along older canes at the nodes, racemose, fasciculate, to .84" [2.1 cm] long, each racemse can rebloom over the years, subsessile, slowly successively single to 8 flowered inflorescence with ovate, apiculate, scarious bracts and widely triangular-ovate, obtuse, mucronate, membraneous-papery, carinate, concave, clasping the ovary floral bracts and carrying resupinate flowers with transparent yellow tepals lined with purple veins, a yellow to pale yellow lip with 5 purple-magenta lines.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Orquidea {Mexico City] 5 [2]: 36-37 Dressler & Hagsater 1975 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum 10 Plate 1027 Soto 2008 drawing fide;

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