Hetaeria gardneri (Thwaites) Trimen 1885 Drawing by © M.D.Dassanayake & F.R.Fosberg

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Common Name Gardner's Hetaeria [English Orchid Collector in ceylon 1800's]

Flower Size .138" [3.4 mm]

Found in central Sri Lanka in tropical wet, evergreen forests at elevations of 600 up to 1250 meters as a small to medium sized, warm to cool growing terrestrial with a basally creeping then erect, leafy stem carrying a few, rather distant, oblong, ovate to oblique, acute, bright green, glabrous and shiny above, paler green beneath, gradually narrowing below in to the petiolate base leaves that blooms in the winter on a terminal, erect, peduncle puberulous, with 6 acuminate, pubescent, sterile bracts, lower ones larger, 6.6" [16.5 cm] long, rachis glandular-pubescent, to 10.4" [26 cm] long overall, many flowered inflorescence with ovate, acuminate, acute, glandular-pubescent, 3 veined, margin slightly serrulate towards the acuminate end floral bracts and carrying brownish white flowers with a distint yellow lip.

Synonyms *Rhamphidia gardneri Thwaites 1861

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; A Revised Handbook to the Flora of Ceylon Vol 2 Dassanayake & Fosberg 1981 drawing fide;

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