!Restrepiella ophiocephala (Lindl.) Garay & Dunst. 1966 Photo by © Eric Hunt and His Orchid Website

Another Flower Photo courtesy of Jay Pfahl

Red Flower cultivar Photo courtesy of Dale and Deni Borders.

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Common Name Snake's Head Restrepiella

Flower Size 3/4" [2 cm]

This is a medium sized, cool to warm growing epiphyte from Mexico to Costa Rica as well as occasionally in South Florida in damp, lower montane forests with rivers, margins of swamp forest and coffee plantations at elevations of 40 to 1600 meters with a short creeping rhizome and stout, well clustered, erect cylindric stems mostly covered with tubular sheaths that carries a single, elipticv-lanceolate, acute, gradually narrowing below into the conduplicate, shortly petiolate base leaf at the apex and carrying basally, a large tubular spathe at the leaf base from which the short, ringent, fasciculate inflorescence arises from the ramicaul without an annulus with 1 to 4 flowers at a time, and with more that appear successively after the last has faded. This species blooms in the winter and spring and likes to be evenly moist year round.

Synonyms *Pleurothallis ophiocephala Lindl. 1838; Pleurothallis peduncularis Hook. 1841; Pleurothallis puberula Klotzsch 1854; Pleurothallis stigmatoglossa Rchb. f. ex Lindl. 1859; Restrepia ophiocephala (Lindl.) Rchb. f. 1854; Restrepiella ophiocephala f. clausa I.Bock 1996

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR ; Bonplandia 2(7): 88. 1854 as Restrepia ophiocephala; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1145 Dodson 1984; Systematics of the Pleurothallidinae Vol 1 Luer 1986; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1488 Atwood 1992; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Systematics of Lepanthospsis, Octomeria subgenus Pleurothallopsis, Restrepiella, Salpistele and Teagueia Vol 8 1991; AOS Bulletin Vol 67 No 3 1998 drawing

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