''Epidendrum parvilabre'' is 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 ...

terrestrial orchid native to the mountainous (~2 km) tropical rainforests of

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...

and

Piura Piura is a city in northwestern Peru located in the Sechura Desert on the Piura River. It is the capital of the Piura Region and the Piura Province. Its population was 484,475 as of 2017. It was here that Spanish Conqueror Francisco Pizarro fou ...

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...

Description

The sympodial stems of ''E. parvilabre'' are so thick that Reichenbach described them as

pseudobulbs 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 h ...

, H. G. Reichenbach nr. 129 "Orchides" in C. Müller, Ed. ''Walpers. Annales Botanices Systematicae'', 6(1861)351. Berlin although Dodson & Bennett 1969 did not follow suit, noting only that the stems are unifoliate. The oblong suboblique emarginate leathery leaves are longer than the stems. The densely flowered

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 ...

inflorescence erupts from a double or triple spathe at the apex of the pseudobulb, similar to the subgenus ''E''. subg. ''Spathium''. The flower bracts are small and acute. The flowers are a little more than 1 cm across, with green sepals and petals, and a white

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 ...

with purple spots. The sepals are oblong-obtuse, 1 cm long, and 3–4 mm wide; the falcate revolute lateral sepals are slightly shorter and wider than the plicate dorsal sepal. The linear petals are much narrower than the sepals. The deeply trilobate lip is

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

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. The lateral lobes of the lip are falcate and very acute. The very narrow medial lobe of the lip is cuneate and trilobed at its apex.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5382791 parvilabre Orchids of Ecuador Orchids of Peru