Polystachya paniculata (Sw.) Rolfe 1897 SECTION Caulescentes Kranzl.
Photo by © Lourens Grobler.
Photos by © Eric Hunt
Common Name The Paniculate Polystachya
Flower Size .18" [4 mm]
Found in Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Etiopia, Uganda and Zaire in rainforests on large primary branches of trees at elevations of 200 to 1900 meters as a small to medium sized, hot to cool growing epiphyte with erect, stout, cylindrical, compressed, sulcate with age, 3 to 4 noded pseudobulbs carrying 3 to 4 distichous, strap-shaped, more or less unequally bilobed apically leaves that blooms in the fall on a branched, many flowered, glabrous, 8" [21 cm] long, terete inflorescence with bright colored flowers subtended by 1 to 3, obtuse to acute sheaths .
Synonyms *Dendrobium paniculatum Sw. 1805
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; AOS Bulletin Vol 32 # 10 1963; Orchids of East Africa Piers 1968; AOS Bulletin Vol 38 #2 1969 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 52 No 11 1983 photo fide; Flora of Tropical East Africa Orchidaceae Part 2 Cribb 1984; Orchids of The Central African Republic A Provisional Checklist Kew Bulletin Vol 42 [3] 1987; Die Orchideen Band 1B lieferung 23 1393 - 1456 Brieger 1990 photos ok; The Manual Of Cultivated Orchid Species Bechtel, Cribb & Launert 1992 photo fide; African Orchids in the Wild and Cultivation La Croix 1997; Les Orchidees de Cote d'Ivorie Perez-Vera 2003 photo/drawing fide; Field Guide to the Ethiopian Orchids Demissew, Cribb & Rasmussen 2004 photo fide; Orchid Digest vol 71 #3 2007 photo fide; Orchidaceae of West Central Africa Vol 2 Szlach. etal 2015 drawing good; AOS Bulletin Vol 85 #4 2016 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 89 #1 2020 photo fide
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