Polystachya elegans Rchb.f. 1881 SECTION Polychaete CribbFONT color=red> Photo by Copyright © Alan Gregg Swansea Botanical Complex

Part shade Hot Warm Summer

Common Name The Elegant Polystachya

Flower Size 5/8" [1.4 cm]

Found in Nigeria, Togo, Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea in evergreen forests at elevations around 500 meters as a miniature sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte with spindle-shaped, superposed, clumping pseudobulbs enveloped by dry, brown sheaths and carrying 8 to 9, disitichous, straqp-shaped, glossy green, articulated to the sheath below leaves that blooms in the summer on a basal, 3.6 to 4" [9 to 10 cm] long, one to 3 branched, many flowered inflorescence.

Synonyms Dendrorkis elegans (Rchb.f.) Kuntze 1891; Polystachya calyptrata Kraenzl. 1914; Polystachya mannii Rolfe 1897; Unguiculabia elegans (Rchb.f.) Szlach. & Mytnik 2008

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Otia Botanica Hamburgensia Rchb.f 1881; African Orchids in the Wild and Cultivation La Croix 1997 drawing good; Orchidaceae of West Central Africa Vol 2 Szlachetko etal 2015 as Unguiculabia elegans drawing ok

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