!Dilomilis montana (Sw.) Summerh. 1961

Photo © by Reynard Rohena and his Puerto Rican Nature Photography Website

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Common Name The Mountain Loving Dilomilis - The Parrotbeak Orchid

Flower Size .6" [1.5 cm]

Found from Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Puerto Rico in wet cloud forests along ridges and roadsides at elevations of 700 to 2000 meters as a large to giant sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte or terrestrial with an erect, terete, cane-like, sometimes branched stem enveloped by persistent leaf bearing sheaths and carrying numerous, coriaceous, rigid, entire, linear-lanceolate to lanceolate-elliptic, gradually becoming conduplicate into the clasping base leaves that blooms in the winter through early spring on a terminal, erect, sometimes branched, 12" [30 cm] long, 3 to 17 flowered inflorescence with stiff, erect floral bracts and carrying flowers that smell of violets.

Synonyms Bletia montana (Sw.) Rchb.f. 1862; Cymbidium montanum (Sw.) Sw. 1799; Dilomilis serrata Raf. 1838; *Epidendrum montanum Sw. 1788; Octadesmia montana (Sw.) Benth. & Hook. f. 1883; Octadesmia serratifolia (Hook.) Benth. 1881; Octomeria serratifolia Hook. 1828; Tetramicra montana (Sw.) Griseb. 1864

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Flora of Jamaica Fawcett & Rendle 1910 drawing ok; Die Orchideen Schlechter 1915 as Octadesmia montana; Atlas des Orchidees Cultivees Constantin 1920 as Octadesmia serratifolia drawing ok; Iconografia de Orchidaceae Do Brasil Hoehne 1949 as Octadesmia serratifolia???? drawing fide; Encyclopedia of Cultivated Orchids Hawkes 1965 as Octadesmia montana; Die Orchideen 3 Auflage Bd 1 Sonderabdruck aus Schlechter Lieferung 8 449 - 512 Brieger, Maatsch and Senghas 1976 as Octadesmia montana; An Orchid Flora Of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Ackerman 1995 drawing ok; The Orchids of Cuba Llamacho & Larramendi 2005 photo good; Orquideas de la Republica Dominicana Y Haiti Fernandez 2007 photo fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014 drawing fide; Pleurothallids Neotropical Jewels Vol 1 Karremans & Viera 2020 photo fide

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