''Epidendrum cochlidium'' (or ''Flor de San José'') is a

neotropical The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

orchid Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering ...

which can grow both terrestrially and

epiphytically An epiphyte is an organism that grows on the surface of a plant and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water (in marine environments) or from debris accumulating around it. The plants on which epiphytes grow are called phoroph ...

in Peru and Venezuela at altitudes ranging from 1.2 km to 2.9 km.

Description

''E. cochlidium'' is a member of the subgenus ''E.'' subg. ''Amphiglottium'' which is characterized by a

sympodial Sympodial growth is a bifurcating branching pattern where one branch develops more strongly than the other, resulting in the stronger branches forming the primary shoot and the weaker branches appearing laterally. A sympodium, also referred to a ...

growth habit, terminal inflorescences, stems and peduncles covered with tight, imbricating, distichous sheathes, stems which do not swell into

pseudobulb The pseudobulb is a storage organ found in many epiphytic and terrestrial sympodial orchids. It is derived from a thickening of the part of a stem between leaf nodes and may be composed of just one internode or several, termed heteroblastic and ...

s, terminal inflorescences which are nearly always

racemose A raceme ( or ) or racemoid is an unbranched, indeterminate type of inflorescence bearing flowers having short floral stalks along the shoots that bear the flowers. The oldest flowers grow close to the base and new flowers are produced as the s ...

, and flowers with the

lip The lips are the visible body part at the mouth of many animals, including humans. Lips are soft, movable, and serve as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. Human lips are a tactile sensory organ, and can be ...

adnate Adnate may refer to: * Adnation, in botany, the fusion of two or more whorls of a flower * Adnate, in mycology, a classification of lamellae (gills) * Conjoined twins Conjoined twins – sometimes popularly referred to as Siamese twins – are ...

to the sides of the

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

to its apex. Reichenbach 1861 describes the stem as terete and gracile, whereas Schweinfurth 1960 describes the stem as "more or less stout." The leathery, ovate-oblong obtuse and emarginate leaves whose basal sheathes cover the upper part of the stem grow to 12 cm long by 2.5 cm wide. The peduncle can grow to 0.6 m long and ends in a congested raceme; rarely, the inflorescence will branch into a

panicle A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. (softcover ). Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers (and fruit) be pedicellate (having a single stem per flower). The branches of a panicle are of ...

. The petals and sepals are linear-lanceolate to elliptic-oblong and nearly the same size, the petals only slightly smaller. As is typical of the section ''E.'' sect. ''Schistochila'', the lip is divided into three lobes. As is typical the subsection ''E.'' subsect. ''Tuberculata'', the lobes are lacerate, and a tubercle covers the center of the lip. The crested and plicate tubercle is white to cream or yellow, and the remainder of the flower is red, pink, or yellow. The flower is non-resupinate. The

diploid Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for autosomal and pseudoautosomal genes. Sets of chromosomes refer to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, respectively ...

chromosome A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

number of ''E. cochlidium'' has been determined as 2''n'' = 28.page 251 of Leonardo P. Felix and Marcelo Guerra: "Variation in chromosome number and the basic number of subfamily Epidendroideae (Orchidaceae)" ''Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society'' 163(2010)234-278. The Linnean Society of London. downloaded October 2010 from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8339.2010.01059.x/pdf

References

External links

Photographs of flowers can be found at
The Internet Orchid Species Photo Encyclopedia
* http://maqui.ucdavis.edu/Images/Orchids/epidendrum_cochlidium.html * http://www.winsomeorchids.com/gallery/miscellaneous/imagepage50.htm * https://web.archive.org/web/20090805172215/http://www.orchidstudium.com/Estrangeiras/Epidendrum%20cochlidium.html * http://www.pbase.com/jwdicus/image/90856785 {{Taxonbar, from=Q5382748

cochlidium ''Cochlidium'' is a genus of ferns belonging to the family Polypodiaceae Polypodiaceae is a family of ferns. In the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016 (PPG I), the family includes around 65 genera and an estimated 1,650 specie ...

Orchids of Peru Orchids of Venezuela