Rudolfiella saxicola [Schlechter] Hoehne 1953

Inflorescence Photos courtesy of Danny Lentz ©, plant grown by the Atlanta Botanical Garden

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Common Name The Lithophytic Rudolfiella

Flower Size 1 3/8" [3.2 cm]

Found in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru in wet tropical forests at elevations of 200 to 800 meters as a small sized, hot to warm growing, caespitose lithophyte and epiphyte with ovoid-pyriform, lightly sulcate, glabrous pseudobulbs subtended by several dry basal, papery bracts with a single elliptic-lanceolate, attenuate, acute, plicate, subcoriaceous, rigid leaf with an elongate, terete petiole that blooms on a lateral, 15" [36 cm] long, very lax, several flowered, racemose inflorescence with 3 tubular scarious bracts on the lower half and minute floral bracts that is longer than the leaf and arising on a mature pseudobulb with successive opening flowers occuring in the summer in cultivation and winter in nature.

Synonyms Bifrenaria floribunda (Schltr.) C. Schweinf. 1944; Bifrenaria saxicola (Schltr.) C. Schweinf. 1944; *Lindleyella floribunda Schltr. 1924; *Lindleyella saxicola Schltr. 1924; Rudolfiella floribunda (C. Schweinf.) Hoehne 1953; Schlechterella floribunda (Schltr.) Hoehne 1944; Schlechterella saxicola (Schltr.) Hoehne 1944

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum Plate 175 Bennett & Christenson 1993; Native Colombian Orchids Vol 6 COS 1998;

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