Polystachya bennettiana Rchb.f. 1881 SECTION Caulescentes

Photos courtesy of © Lourens Grobler.

Common Name Bennett's Polystachya [British Botanist and Head of British Museum 1800's]

Flower Size 3/4" [2.2 cm]

Found in Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroons, Rwanda, Zaire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia on large trees in open forests and riverine forests at elevations around 900 to 2000 meters as a small to medium sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with clustered, slender stems enveloped basally by loose tubular sheaths and carrying 2 to 6, widely spaced, spreading, ligulate or narrowly elliptic, acute leaves that blooms in the winter and spring on a erect to recurved, terete, pubescent, many branched, 3.2 to 12" [8 to 30 cm] long, many flowered inflorescence with pubescent externally, vanilla scented flowers.

Synonyms Dendrorkis bennettiana (Rchb.f.) Kuntze 1891; Polystachya stricta Rolfe 1909

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Otia Botanica Hamburgensia Rchb.f 1881; Orchids of East Africa Piers 1968 as P stricta photo ok; Flora of Tropical East Africa Orchidaceae Part 2 Cribb 1984; The Manual Of Cultivated Orchid Species Bechtel, Cribb & Launert 1992 as P stricta; Orchids of Kenya Stewart 1996; African Orchids in the Wild and Cultivation La Croix 1997 photo fide; Les Orchidees de Cote d'Ivorie Perez-Vera 2003 as P stricta photo/drawing fide; Field Guide to the Ethiopian Orchids Demissew, Cribb & Rasmussen 2004 photo fide; Orchidaceae of West Central Africa Vol 2 Szlatch. etal 2014 drawing ok; AOS Bulletin Vol 84 #11 2015 photo fide;

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