Nervilia appressifolia Aver. & V.C.Nguyen 2020
Drawing/photos by L. Averyanov and T. Maisak. and the Taiwania 65: 487 Aver. & V.C.Nguyen 2020
Common Name The Appressed Leaved Nervilia [refers to the ]
Flower Size .6" [1.5 cm]
Found in Vietnam in on wet lateritic soil at the bottom of small occasionally flooded (during torrential rains) puddles in open semideciduous seasonally flooded dipterocarp forest and woodland with domination of small bamboo, at elevations of 200 to 300 meters as a mini-miniature sized, hot growing semi-aquatic terrestrial with an underground, globular, annually substituting, with a few short finger-like outgrowths, producing basally, erect to suberect, sparsely verruculose, ebracteate, stem at the base and carrying a single, adpressed to the ground, sessile or subsessile, cordate to orbicular or reniform, convex, umbrella-shaped, blunt or broadly obtuse at apex, margin entire, with 5 to 13, arcuate main veins leaf that is not present at anthesis that blooms in the later spring on an erect, , pale olive greenish, provided at the middle with 1 to 2, braoad, tubular, obtuse, scarious, sterile bracts, 1.4 to 2.6" [3.5 to 6.5 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence with inconspicuous, broadly triangular, much shorter than the pedicel floral bracts and carrying nutant, not widely opening flowers.
"The discovered plant belongs to a group of species of the genus Nervilia with single flowered inflorescence and a 3-lobed lip more or less hairy or papillulate in the center. In mainland Asia this group is represented by N. infundibulifolia , N. punctata and N. viridis. Among them, the new species is closest in its floral morphology to N. viridiflora which is endemic to southern Yunnan province of China, but differs in the smaller floral bract less than .04" [1 mm] long (vs. .2 to .24" [5–6 mm] long), smaller, nutant, not widely opening flowers with sepals and petals .3 to .336" [7.5 to 8.4 mm] long (vs. flowers larger, suberect, widely opening, with sepals and petals .52 to .72" [13 to 18 mm] long), lip with obovate or narrowly obovate, obtuse median lobe, as wide as or narrower than the hypochile (vs. median lobe orbicular, emarginate, broader than the hypochile), conduplicately folded (vs. almost flat) lip, and median lobe of the lip with conspicuous tall papillose ridge (vs. median lobe with two insignificant low glabrous keels). At the same time, N. appressifolia strikingly differs from almost all known congeners in the sessile leaf tightly appressed to the ground, long green epigeous stolons and in its habitat at the moist bottom of temporary flooded puddles. Such narrow ecological preferences are not found in any other known species of the genus.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Taiwania 65: 487 Aver. & V.C.Nguyen 2020 Drawing/photo fide
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