Aa olivacea D.Trujillo, Rob.Fern. & Edquén 2024
Photo/TYPE Drawing by © J D Edquén and Lankesteriana 24: 246 D.Trujillo, Rob.Fern. & Edquén 2024
Common Name The Olive Colored Aa
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Ancash, Lima, Pasco, and San Martin departments of Peru in wet grasslands and shrublands, among rocks on stony hillsides at elevations of 3200 to 3740 meters as a small to medium sized, cold growing terrestrial that blooms in the fall and winter with a short, erect stem carrying a basal rosette of conduplicate, sheathing the stem, elliptic to lanceolate, acute, withered or green leaves at flowering time on an erect, terminal, 11.2" to 20" [28 to 50 cm] long overall, peduncle, terete, [27 to 48.5 cm] long, provided with 10 to 19 transluscent, brown veined, tubular-infundibuliform, with an ovate to lanceolate, acute to acuminate free apical portion sheathing bracts, rachis, glabrous, 1.2 to 2.4" 3 to 6 cm] long, cylindrical, successively 60 to 100 flowered inflorescence with translucent brown with cream white apex, broadly elliptic, ovate to lanceolate, acute, distal margin somewhat irregularly erose, longer than the flowers floral bracts and carrying non-resupinate flowers with the sepals and petals chestnut brown to olive green with cream to light brown apex, lip dark chestnut brown with olive green with a light olive green and creamy white margin.
"The combination of morphological characteristics with the flower coloration makes specimens of A. olivacea readily distinguishable from those of all other species of the genus. The olive green to chestnut brown color of its flowers turns dark brown to black when old and dried; whereas other Aa species, that have white, white and green or brownish white colored flowers turns light brown to brown when old and dried; this feature distinguishes the species from others in herbarium collections. The new species is similar to A. hieronymi from northern Argentina. Both species display dense spikes of dark green to brown flowers that turn black in old (and dried) flowers, with translucent, whitish floral bracts, lateral sepals spreading and perpendicular to the floral axis, and a globose, slightly inflexed lip. However, A. olivacea is recognized by its elliptic to lanceolate leaves (vs. linear-lanceolate), 60 to 100-flowered spikes, (vs. 7 to 25-flowered spikes), a glabrous rachis (vs. pubescent), olive green to chestnut brown flowers (vs. emerald green to brown), lateral sepals with the margin entire to occasionally minutely erose near the apex (vs. apical margin slightly serrate), petals with the apical margin slightly erose to sinuate (vs. apical margin slightly serrate), an unlobed lip with lacerate to erose margin (vs. obscurely trilobed lip with deeply laciniate margins), and ovary with scarce hairs especially in the distal half (vs. many hairs distributed over almost all the ovary)." D.Trujillo, Rob.Fern. & Edquén 2024
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Lankesteriana 24: 246 D.Trujillo, Rob.Fern. & Edquén 2024 Drawing/photo fide
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