Malaxis abieticola Salazar & Soto Arenas 2001

Plant in situ Arizona Photos by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

Collectrion sheet Scan by © JSTOR and the JSTOR Plant sciences WebPage

EARLIER

Common Name The Long Spiked Malaxis

Flower Size 1/2" long x 1/4" wide [1.25 cm long x .675 cm wide]

Found in Arizona, New Mexico, and Baja, Chihuahua, Jalisco, Michoacan, Mexico, Morales, Hidalgo and Oaxaca states of Mexico in cloud forests at elevations around 2500 to 3000 meters as a medium sized, cold growing terrestrial with an ovoid-pyriform, ovate to ovate-elliptic, obtuse, abruptly narrowing into the round then elongate petillate base leaf that blooms in the summer and earlier fall on an erect, terminal, racemose, 4.4" [to 11 cm] long, lax, successively several, many flowered inflorescence with very extended, green, broadly ovate, conduplicate-concave, acute floral bracts and carrying slighly sticky non-resupinate flowers

In Icones Orchidacearum I plate 59 Hagsater & Salazar wanting to put this species [at the time Microstylis tenuis Wats. 1896] in the more correct genus, Malaxis, failed to notice that, the plant Malaxis tenuis Ames was describing was in Sumatra not Mexico. The species Ames named Malaxis tenuis was also illegal because of an earlier use by Lindley to describe an orchid that is now in Oberonia. So Salazar & Soto corrected the mistake in 1990 renameing the species, M abieticola in 2001, which is found in Mexico.

Synonyms Microstylis tenuis S.Watson 1891

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; The Native Orchids of the United States and Canada Luer 1975 as M tenuis drawing/photos fide; Icones Orchidacearum I Plate 59 Hagsater & Salazar 1990 as Malaxis tenuis [S Wats.] Ames 1922 drawing ok; Orquideas del Estado de Morelos ORQUÍDEA (MÉX.) VOLUMEN 16 NÚMERO ÚNICO enero 2002 drawing fide/photo ok;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------