Oncidium ayabacanum D.E.Benn. & Christenson 1998 SECTION Oblongata

TYPE Drawing by Alcantara, Bennett & Christenson

LATE EARLY

Common Name The Ayabaca Oncidium [a town near where the species was discovered]]

Flower Size 1.2" [3 cm]

Found in Piura department of Peru in cool damp forests on small trees in protected gullies, at elevations above 3000 meters as a small sized, cold growing epiphyte with narrwoly elliptic, complanate, sulcate pseudobulbs subtebded by a seriesw of imbricate, distichous bracts and carrying 2, apical, linear, basally conduplicate, acuminate leaves that blooms in the late winter and early spring on a shorter than the leaves, 4.8" [12 cm] long [may be an immature plant], few flowered inflorescence carrying flowers with refract tepals, the sepals are yellow with a brick-red basasl blotch and faint reddish markings along the margin of the dorsal sepal, the petals similar to the dorsal sepal but with brighter markings, the lip brighter yellow with a brick red marking on the claw, the callus ridges dull, off white, the colum yellow and dorsally dark purplish red with a medium purple red border around the stigma, the anther yellowish green with a purple blotch in the center and pale yellow pollina.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Rudolf Schlechter Die Orchideen Band 1C lieferung 44-45 pg 2763 - 2898 Brieger 2001; LANKESTERIANA 14(1) 2014

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