Stenorrhynchos lanceolatus (Aubl.) Rich.

• Title

  Stenorrhynchos lanceolatus (Aubl.) Rich.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Stenorrhynchos lanceolatum (Aubl.) Rich. ex Spreng.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Stenorrhynchus lanceolatus Red Ground Orchid Family Orchidaceae Orchid Family Limodorum lanceolatum Aublet, Histoire des Plantes de la Guiane Française 2: 821. 1775. Stenorrhynchus lanceolatus Grisebach, Flora of the British West Indian Islands 642. 1864. An attractive ground orchid, usually growing on grassy slopes, widely distributed in the West Indies and in continental tropical America, ranging northward into the Bahama Islands and southern Florida. In Porto Rico it is occasional in wet or moist districts, ascending into the Luquillo Mountains; the red, or sometimes yellow, large flowers are conspicuous, clustered on a sheathed stem (scape), the long, basal leaves appearing after flowering time. Stenorrhynchus (Greek, narrow beak), a genus established by the French botanist L. C. Richard in 1818, consists of about 40 species of upright, terrestrial orchids, natives of tropical and subtropical America. They have clustered, fleshy roots, and large, basal leaves, which are often wanting at flowering time. The flowers, clustered at the top of a sheathed scape, are rather large, and mostly red, or yellow; the 3 sepals are nearly alike, the middle one attached to the petals, the lateral ones united below and produced into a sac, or spur; the petals are mostly shorter than the sepals, the lip concave; the stigma is borne under the beak of the style (rostellum); the anther is narrow. The fruit is a capsule. Stenorrhynchus lanceolatus (lance-shaped leaves) has a rather stout, scurfy, or somewhat glandular scape from 30 to 60 centimeters high, sheathed by several pointed scales from 2 to 4 centimeters long, and topped by a cluster of flowers from 5 to 10 centimeters long. The leaves, which appear after the flowers are from 1 to 4 in number, oblong, or lance-shaped, smooth, pointed, from 10 to 30 centimeters long, and from 2 to 5 centimeters wide. The red, or sometimes yellow flowers are from 2 to 3 centimeters long, the lance-shaped sepals and petals pointed, 5-nerved, or 7-nerved. The capsule is about 1 centimeter long.