Kefersteinia alba Schltr 1923 SECTION Papilionatae Photo by © Eric Hunt and His Orchid Website

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Common Name The White Kefersteinia

Flower Size .6" [1.5 cm]

Found in Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador in wet forests at elevations of 100 to 1400 meters as a miniature sized, hot to cool growing epiphyte with subcoriaceous, to 5, narrowly elliptic, acute, conduplicate below into the elongate, petiolate base leaves that are articulated into the basal leaf sheaths and all held in a fan shape that blooms at most any time of the year on an axillary, to 3/4" [2 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence holding the flower below mid leaf.

Differs from K lactea by the lyre-shaped callus, triangular wings above the middle of the column and a rhombic shaped lip. K lactea does not have the column wings nor does it have a slightly trilobed lip.

Synonyms Chondrorhyncha alba (Schltr.) L.O. Williams 1956

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR ; *Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 19: 228. COsta Rica Schlechter 1923; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1330 Atwood 1989 drawing ok; Rudolf Schlechter Die Orchideen Band 1B lieferung 26 1584 - 1648 Brieger 1992 photo good; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2001 photo WRONG! actually candida; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003 drawing fide; Vanishing Beauty; Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 1 Pupulin 2005; Huntleya and Related Orchids Harding 2008 photo fide

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