Cattleya iricolor Rchb. f. 1874 SUBGENUS Stellata Withner 1988 Photo courtesy of Jay Pfahl

Flower Closeup Photo courtesy of Eric Hunt

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Common Name Rainbow-colored Cattleya

Flower Size 3 1/2" [8 cm]

Found in Peru and Ecuador in the eastern Andes as an ascending, unifoliate epiphyte in wet montane forests, high up in tall tree branches at elevations of 400 to 1220 meters and is a rare, warm to hot growing, erect epiphytic species with clavate, slightly compressed, pseudobulbs that become sulcate with age and carries a single, apical, narrowly oblong-elliptic or oblong, acute, conduplicate towards the base, coriaceous leaf that has a few smaller flowers, for the genus, on a terminal, erect, 2 1/2" [6.25 cm] long, few [6 to 10] flowered inflorescence arising from a conduplicate sheath on a newly emerging pseudobulb and is held at mid-leaf all occurring in the late winter and spring.

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; The Catttleya and their Relatives Withner Vol 1 1988 photo fide; Manual of Orchids Stewart 1995; Manual of Cultivated Orchids Bechtel, Cribb and Laurent 1982; Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum Plate 011 Bennet & Christenson 1993 drawing fide; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 411 Dodson 1982 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 Dodson 1993 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 73 No 6 2004 photo; Flora Of Ecuador # 76 225[2] Dodson & Luer 2005 drawing fide; Orchid Species of Peru Zelenko Bermudez 2009 photo fide; Las Orquideas del Peru Izerskyy & Bezverhov 2011 photo fide

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