Epidendrum blepharistes is a species of orchid in the genus Epidendrum

Epidendrum

Epidendrum , abbreviated Epi in horticultural trade, is a large neotropical genus of the orchid family. With more than 1,100 species, some authors describe it as a mega-genus. The genus name refers to its epiphytic growth habit...

native to Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

, Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

, Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

, Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, and Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

.

Description

Epidendrum blepharistes grows both terrestrially

Terrestrial plant

A terrestrial plant is one that grows on land. Other types of plants are aquatic , epiphytic , lithophytes and aerial ....

 and epiiphytically

Epiphyte

An epiphyte is a plant that grows upon another plant non-parasitically or sometimes upon some other object , derives its moisture and nutrients from the air and rain and sometimes from debris accumulating around it, and is found in the temperate zone and in the...

 at altitudes ranging from 1.0 km to 3.0 km in the Neotropics. Like other members of the subgenus E. subg. Amphiglottium

Epidendrum subg. Amphiglottium

Epidendrum subg. Amphiglottium Lindl. 1841 is a subgenus of reed-stemmed Epidendrums, distinguished by an apical inflorescence with the peduncle covered from its base with close imbricating sheaths and by a lip that is adnate to the column to its apex.Reichenbach published three sections in this...

, E. blepharistes exhibits a sympodial growth habit, with individual stems covered from the base with close, tubular sheaths; on the upper part of the stem, these sheaths are the bases of the distichous leaves. E. blepharistes differs from most members of E. subg. Amphiglottium by frequently having a fusiform swelling, up to 1.5 dm long, at the base of each stem. The elongate, ovate, obtuse leaves can grow more than 22 cm long by 3 cm wide. The terminal peduncle

Peduncle (botany)

In botany, a peduncle is a stem supporting an inflorescence, or after fecundation, an infructescence.The peduncle is a stem, usually green and without leaves, though sometimes colored or supporting small leaves...

 is covered from its base in close tubular sheaths, and carries either a loose panicle

Panicle

A panicle is a compound raceme, a loose, much-branched indeterminate inflorescence with pedicellate flowers attached along the secondary branches; in other words, a branched cluster of flowers in which the branches are racemes....

 (typical of the section E. sect. Polycladia

Epidendrum sect. Polycladia

Epidendrum sect. Polycladia Rchb.f. 1861 is a section of the Subgenus E. subg. Amphiglottium Lindl. of the Genus Epidendrum of the Orchidaceae...

) consisting of rather few distant raceme

Raceme

A raceme is a type of inflorescence that is unbranched and indeterminate and bears pedicellate flowers — flowers having short floral stalks called pedicels — along the axis. In botany, axis means a shoot, in this case one bearing the flowers. In a raceme, the oldest flowers are borne...

s, or a single raceme. The small flowers are a rich rose color with oval sepals up to 10 mm long by 4 mm wide, acuminate petals nearly the same length as the sepals but with a denticulate margin, and a quadrilobate lip

Labellum

Labellum is the Latin diminutive of labium, meaning lip. These are anatomical terms used descriptively in biology, for example in Entomology and botany.-Botany:...

 which is adnate to the column

Column (botany)

The column, or technically the gynostemium, is a reproductive structure that can be found in several plant families: Aristolochiaceae, Orchidaceae, and Stylidiaceae....

 to its apex. (Schweinfurth 1959 describes the lip as "deeply 3-lobed" and then describes the mid-lobe as "deeply bilobed at the apex".) The lateral lobes of the lip are more or less fringed. There are two calli where the lip diverges from the column, and a keel between them, running part way down the medial lobe of the lip.

The diploid chromosome number of E. blepharistes has been determined as 2n = 40.

External links

• http://www.orchidspecies.com/epifunkii.htm
• http://maqui.ucdavis.edu/Images/Orchids/epidendrum_blepharistes.html
• http://fm2.fieldmuseum.org/plantguides/guide_pdfs/166%20Maquipucuna%20orchids.pdf
• picture of herbarium sheet: http://orchid.unibas.ch/phpMyHerbarium/3130/1////specimen.php
• holotype of E. dolabrilobum herbarium sheet pictures: http://asaweb.huh.harvard.edu:8080/databases/specimens?id=110482