Xylobium subpulchrum Dressler 2000 TYPE Photo by © Dressler and The Epidendra website

Another Inflorescence Photo by Oak Hill Gardens Webpage

Another Inflorescence Photo by Carlos Hajek and his Peruvian Orchid Page

FragranceDeep Shade WarmCoolSpring

Common Name or Meaning The Almost Pretty Xylobium

Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]

Found in southern Colombia and Peru at elevations around 800 to 1000 meters as a small to medium sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with ovoid pseudobulbs enveloped by basal fibrous sheaths and carrying 1 to 2, elliptic to obovate-elliptic, acute to abruptly acute, 5 veined, narrowing below into the petiolate base leaves that blooms in the later spring on a basal, peduncle to 1" [2.5 cm] long, with ovate to suborbicular bracts, 1.6 to 2.6" [4 to 6.5 cm] long overall, 8 to 12 flowered inflorescence with obovate, cuneate floral bracts and carrying flowers that smell of putrid rotten meat.

Similar to X colleyi but differs in the ovoid pseudobulbs, having 8 to 12 flowers, white to pink sepals and petals, and brownish red midlobe, shorter sepals, shorter petals, and smaller lip, with 5 keels on the lip, a strong putrid rotting meat smell and coming from the eastern slope of the Andes.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Plantarum Tropicarum Plate 600 Dodson 1989 as X colleyi drawing fide; Native Colombian Orchids VOl 4 COS 1992 as X colleyi not photo fide; Icones Orchidacearum Plate 198 Bennett & Christenson 1993 as X colleyi drawing fide; Rudolf Schlechter Die Orchideen Band 1B lieferung 30 1841 - 1904 Brieger 1994 as X colleyi drawing/photo fide; *Orquideologia 21: 310 Dressler 2000 photo fide; Rudolf Schlechter Die Orchideen Band 1C lieferung 44-45 pg 2763 - 2898 Brieger 2001; Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana Vol 7 Steyermark, Berry, Yatskievych and Holst 2003 as X colleyi drawing fide; Orquideas de la Serrania del Baudo Misas Urreta 2006 as X colleyi drawing/photo fide; Orchid Digest Vol 73 #3 2009

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