Kefersteinia alba Schltr 1923 SECTION Kefersteinia Photo © Eric Hunt

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Common Name The White Kefersteinia

Flower Size 3/5" [1.5 cm]

Found in Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador in wet forests at elevations of 100 to 1400 meters as a miniature sized, hot to cool growing epiphyte with subcoriaceous, to 5, narrowly elliptic, acute, conduplicate below into the elongate, petiolate base leaves that are articulated into the basal leaf sheaths and all held in a fan shape that blooms at most any time of the year on an axillary, to 3/4" [2 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence holding the flower below mid leaf. Differs from K lactea by the lyre-shaped callus, triangular wings above the middle of the column and a rhombic shaped lip. K lactea does not have the columnm wings nor does it have a slightly trilobed lip.

Synonyms Chondrorhyncha alba (Schltr.) L.O. Williams 1956

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1330 Atwood 1989; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2002 WRONG! actually candida; Vanishing Beauty; Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 1 Pupulin 2005