Epidendrum cnemidophorum Lindl. 1853
GROUP Cristatum SUBGROUP Cnemidophorum type Photo courtesy of Wood Stream Orchids Website
Plant and Flower Photo courtesy of Weyman Bussey
Common Name The Leg-Armor Epidendrum?
Flower Size 2" [5 cm]
Text by Weyman Bussey
This is an exciting plant! It is the darkest form anybody has ever seen. Bill Goldner now has it and I hope he can self it. The gentleman pictured holding the flower on the plant is Dr. Ernesto Aguirre, one of the foremost Mexican orchid taxonomists in the country. It was taken at an orchid show in Mexico City in 1996.
Found in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica in montane cloud forests as a medium sized, cool to warm growing epiphyte with robust, glabrous, green, sheathed below and leafed above stem carrying distichous, alternate, acuminate apically leaves that are articulate below to the conduplicate, clasping leaf sheaths and blooms on a terminal, racemose, few to several [3 to 10] flowered, short inflorescence arising on a mature stem and holding showy flowers occuring in the winter
Synonyms Encyclia affinis (Rchb. f.) Schltr. 1918; Epidendrum affine Rchb. f. 1856; Epidendrum macrobotryum Lindl. ex Rchb.f 1856
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Bonplandia Rchb.f 1856 as Epidendrum affine; Bonplandia Rchb.f 1856 as Epidendrum macrobotryum; AOS Bulletin Vol 49 No 12 1980 photo; Las Orquedias de El Salvador Vol 3 Hamer 1983; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 1216 Dodson 1985; Icones Orchidacearum 3 Plate 391 Hagsater & Sanchez 1999 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 4 Plate 442 Hagsater 2001 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 9 Plate 940 Hagsater 2007 see recognition section; Icones Orchidacearum 9 Plate 940 Hagsater 2007 see recognition section
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
