Sarcoglottis neillii Salazar & Tobar 2019
Photos by © Gerardo Salazar
LATE 
EARLY
Common Name Neill's Sarcoglottis [Dr. David Neill, born in the USA but for many years living and working in Ecuador. He is Director of Conservation and Wildlife Management at the Universidad Estatal Amazónica, Puyo, and founder and Curator of the Herbario Amazónico (ECUAMZ). Dr. Neill has discovered and named many new plant species and several genera, and is a leading researcher of the flora and vegetation of the Andean Tepui Region, one of the less-known biodiversity hotspots of South America current]
Flower Size .48" [1.2 cm]
Found in Zamora Chinchipe province of Ecuador in the Cordillera del Condor and northern Peru in humus-rich dark brown soil with abundant leaf mould in primary lowland tropical forest and lower montane rain forests at elevations of 300 to 1600 meters as a small to medium [with the inflorescence] sized, hot to cool growing terrestrial with 3 to 6, in a basal rosette, horizontal blades, bright green streaked adaxially with silvery-white, sometimes slightly oblique, homogeneously pale olive green abaxially, elliptic to ovate, base broadly cuneate to rounded, apex acute, abruptly narrowing below into the sublinear, channelled, white with pale green margins, ascending petiolate base leaves that blooms in the late fall and early winter in situ on an erect, arising from the center of the rosette of leaves; peduncle brownish-red, partially enclosed by 5, glabrous below the middle, becoming increasingly villose above, with hairs simple, long and slender, translucent, sometimes slightly clavate, arising individually or entangled in groups, glabrous, pale greyish green with whitish margins, the uppermost 2 tinged with brownish-red, the lowermost one sometimes foliaceous sheaths, racemose, to 8" [20 cm] tall, 3 to 14 flowered inflorescence with lanceolate, concave, attenuate, slightly incurved, greenish-red, sparsely pilose at their bases, glabrous otherwise, margins irregularly ciliate but becoming minutely papillose near the apex, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying resupinate, ascending, non-fragrant flowers.
"Similar to S. metallica (Rolfe) Schltr. and S. maroaënsis G.A.Romero & Carnevali, differing from both in its bright green upper side of leaves densely streaked with silvery white and lower leaf surface homogeneously pale olive green (vs. upper surface of leaves reddish-, brownish-, or chocolate-purplish with irregular, bright green dots and spots and homogeneously purplish-red underside). The leaf coloration permits one to distinguish S. neillii from S. metallica and S. maroaënsis at a glance, even in herbarium specimens, in spite of the three species being florally indistinguishable. " Salazar & Tobar 2019
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Phytotaxa 427 (1) © Salazar & Tobar 2019 Sarcoglottis neillii (Orchidaceae: Spiranthinae), a new species from the Andean Tepui Region of Ecuador and Peru drawing/photo fide
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