Polystachya laxiflora Lindl. 1862 SECTION Caulescentes Photo by © Pieter C. Brouwer and his Nature Photo Website

Inflorescence Photo courtesy of Marc Flandres and His Orchid Home Page in France

Inflorescence and Plant Photo courtesy of Guy Ramette-Vovan of Gabon and his Gabon Orchids Website

MID

Common Name The Loosely Flowered Polystachya

Found in the Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Gulf of Guinea Islands, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Zaire and Zambia in very moist evergreen gallery forests at elevations around 200 to 1500 meters as a small sized, hot to cool growing epiphyte with an erect, narrowly cylindrical stem enveloped by 2 to 3, brown, tubular sheaths and carrying to 3, leathery, dark green, elliptic to oblanceolate, acute to subacute leaves that blooms in the mid spring on a apical, pubescent, 1.6 to 12" [4 to 30 cm] long, lax, paniculate, sometimews with slender, secondary branches, to 13 flowered inflorescence with ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, almost glabrous floral bracts.

Related to P armeniaca but it differs in having a short, glabrous, simple to shortly few branched inflorescence that is always shorter than the leaves and the lateral sepals are almost twice as long as thoose of P laxiflora.

Synonyms Dendrorchis galericulata (Rchb.f.) Kuntze 1891; Dendrorchis laxiflora (Lindl.) Kuntze 1891; Polystachya dixantha Rchb. f. 1882; Polystachya galericulata Rchb.f. 1881; Polystachya stricta var. laxiflora (Lindl.) Pérez-Vera 2003

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Otia Botanica Hamburgensia Rchb.f 1881 as P galericulata; AOS Bulletin Vol 32 # 10 1963; The Orchids of South Central Africa Williamson 1977 drawing/photo fide; Die Orchideen Band 1B lieferung 23 1393 - 1456 Brieger 1990; Les Orchidees de Cote d'Ivorie Perez-Vera 2003 as P stricta var laxiflora photo/drawing fide; Orchidaceae of West Central Africa Vol 2 Szlach. etal 2015 drawing good;

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