Altensteinia virescens Lindl.1845
Plant and Flowers in situ Ecuador
Photos by © Lourens Grobler
Drawing by © Calaway Dodson
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Common Name or Meaning The Greenish Altensteinia
Flower Size .16" [4 mm]
Found in Cauca department of Colombia and Azuay, Bolivar,, Chimborazo, , Cotopaxi, Imbabura and Pichincha provinces of Ecuador in wet paramo and subparamo at elevations around 2800 to 3500 meters as a small to medium sized, cold growing terrestrial with a short, erect, stout, sometimes branched at the base stem carrying a rosette of 4 to 6, coriaceous, lanceolate, oblanceolate to linear-lanceolate, acute to obtuse, decreasing in size upwards leaves that blooms in the late summer and fall on a terminal, erect, enveloped by large, glabrous sheathing bracts, 8" [20 cm] long, densely many flowered inflorescence with broadly ovate-elliptic, acute, longer than the ovary flroal bracts and carrying large, greenish yellow, villose externally flowers.
"Distinguished by the deeply cochleate, cucullate lip with erose margins and almost glabrous bracts." Szlachetko & Kolanowska 2019
Synonyms Prescottia crassicaulis F.Lehm. & Kraenzl. 1899
ReferencesW3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. 15: 385 Lindley 1845
Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 26: 501 F.Lehm. & Kraenzl. 1899 as Prescottia crassicaulis
Flora of Ecuador No 9 225[1] Garay 1978;
Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 401 Dodson 1982 drawing fide;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 1 Dodson 1993 drawing/photo fide;
Flora Of Ecuador # 76 225[2] Dodson & Luer 2005 drawing fide;
AOS Bulletin Vol 85 #10 2016 photo good?;
The Orchid Review Vol 127 No 1328 December 2019 photo fide;
Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 1 Ortiz & Uribe 2014 drawing fide
Materials to the Orchid Flora of Colombia Vol 2: 49 Szlachetko & Kolanowska 2019 drawing fide
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