Tetramicra tenera (A.Rich.) Griseb. ex Benth. 1881

Photo by © Fabiola Areces and The New York Botanical Garden Website

Common Name or Meaning The Thin Tetramica

Flower Size .6" [1.5 cm]

Found in Cuba as a small to medium sized, hot growing terrestrial in red clayey, serpentine soils or white sands on exposed hilltops in pine woodlands, savannahs and pine barrens with short stems carrying 1 to 2, mostly solitary, erect, canaliculate, aciculate leaves that blooms in the winter, spring and summer on an erect, occasionally branched, peduncle, slender, terete, enveloped by sheaths basally, 11.2 to 18.8" [28 to 47 cm] long, rachis 2.6 to 10" [6.5 to 25 cm] long, laxly and successively several, 4 to 27 flowered inflorescence with spreading, ovate to lanceolate, acute to acuminate floral bracts and carrying showy, glabrous flowers.

Many references put this species as synomonous with T eulophiae but I feel that they are distinct, but if not then this species takes precedence.

Synonyms *Bletia tenera A.Rich. 1841; Tetramicra erosa Carabia 1943

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Die Orchideen 3 Auflage Bd 1 Sonderabdruck aus Schlechter Lieferung 9 513 - 576 Brieger, Maatsch and Senghas 1977; Catologo Descriptivo de Las Orquideas Cubanas Acuna 1987; Cattleyas and Their Relatives Vol 4 Withner 1996; Orchidaceae Antillanae Nir 2000 as T erosa; Rudolf Schlechter Die Orchideen Band 1C lieferung 42 - 43 pg 2626 - 2762 Brieger 2001; The Orchids of Cuba Laramendi and Llamacho 2005 as T erosa photo fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014;

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