Sigmatostalix amazonica Schltr. 1925 Photo courtesy of Bill Bergstrom and Berstrom Orchids

Plant and Inflorescence Photo courtesy of Maarten Sepp

to and EARLY

Common Name The Amazon Sigmatostalix

Flower Size 5/8"" [1.5 cm]

Found from French Guiana, Surinam, Venezuela, Colombia? Brazil, Bolivia?, and Peru in the lower reaches of wet montane forests as a small sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte at elevations of 100 to 1000 meters with an elliptic or obovate, lightly oblique, strongly compressed, ancipitous, yellow green pseudobulb with several pairs of basal distichous, imbricating sheath with the uppermost leaf bearing, and a single, apical, broadly lanceolate, acute, shortly conduplicate at the base leaf with a carinate midvein that blooms on an axillary, 4" [10 cm] long, arching , racemose panicles with ovate, acuminate, concave bracts all arising on a newly matured pseudobulb with the 8 to 10 branches, successively [20 or more] flowered and longer than the leaves all occuring in the winter and early spring.

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Venezuelan Orchids Vol 5 Dunsterville & Garay 1966; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 586 Dodson 1982; Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum Plate 183 Bennett & Christenson 1993; Native Colombian Orchids Vol 4 COS 1992; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004; Orchid Species Culture Oncidium/Odontoglossum Alliance Bakers 2006

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