Encyclia flabellata (Lindl.) B.F. Thurston & W.R. Thurston 1977 Photo by © Cassio Van der Berg

EARLIER

Common Name The Fan Shaped Encyclia [refers to the lip apex]

Flower Size 1" [2.5 cm]

Found in Vera Cruz Mexico in oak forests at elevations of 500 to 1000 meters as a small to medium sized, warm growing epiphyte with clustered, conic-ovoid to subspherical pseudobulbs enveloped basally in youth by scarious sheaths and carrying 2, apical, elliptic, subacute, coriaceous, sometimes tinged with purple leaves that blooms in the winter through earlier spring on an erect, terminal, peduncle with scarious, tubular, pesistent bracts, laxly paniculate, 6 to 32" [15 to 80 cm] long, to 50 flowered inflorescence with scarious, triangular floral bracts and carrying sweetly fragrant flowers.

This species is very similar to and often cited as a synonym of E candollei but this one differs in the entire to rather obscurely lobed flabellate lip that blooms in the winter and earlier spring and occurs in relatively warm dry locations in Vera Cruz State of Mexico

Synonyms *Epidendrum flabellatum Lindl.1853;

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; The Genus Epidendrum Ames 1936 as Epidendrum flabelllum; Orchid Digest Vol 34 #4 1970 as Epidendrum falabeelatum drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum I Plate 20 Hagsater & Salazar 1990 drawing fide; Cattleyas and Their Relatives Vol V Withner 1998 as syn of E candollei

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