Vanilla claviculata (Sw.) Sw. 1799 SUBGENUS Xanata SECTION Tethya

Photos courtesy of © Eladio Fernandez

Common Name The Cone Shaped Vanilla [refers to the lip]

Flower Size 1 3/4" [4 cm]

Found in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands on shrubs, trees and on limestone rocks in montane forests at elevations around 200 to 360 meters as a large sized, hot growing scandent, climbing, epiphyte with a stout stem with internodes and roots arising from them carrying small fleshy, rigid, subsessile, apiculate, recurved, oblong-lanceolate, to triangular, basally clasping only 1/4 of the terminal shoots and missing on the main stem leaves that blooms in the spring on an axillary, 5 1/4" [14 cm] long, to 12 flowered, racemose inflorescence with short-lived, fragrant flowers.

"It belongs to the American leafless group but can bear fugaceous, small leaves, up to 8 × 1 cm, which are conspicuosly apiculate. The lip is not conspicuously trilobed at apex, as its allies, but rather rounded, and it has a penicillate callus of dense forked hairs and rows of similar hairs towards the apex, but not dense." Soto Arenas & Cribb 2010

Synonyms *Epidendrum claviculatum Sw. 1788; Epidendrum rubrum Lam. 1783; Vanilla rubra (Lam.) Urb. 1920

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Symbolae Antillanae Vol VI Orchidaceae Urban 1909; Flora of Jamaica Fawcett & Rendle 1910 drawing ok; The Orchids of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Ackerman 1992; An Orchid Flora of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Ackerman 1995 drawing fide; Orchidaceae Antillinae Nir 2000; Moscosoa 13:123 2002 ; Lankesteriana 9(3): 355-398 Soto Arenas & Cribb 2010

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