Native to Panama and Costa Rica
Edited 13 April 2007
© Nina Rach
Originally published in Lankesteriana, a Costa Rican journal.
"Manual Orchidaceae coordinator Robert L. Dressler continues to break new ground for Flora mesoamericana, even as his Manual treatment is in press. The four new Sobralia spp. mentioned in the title are Panamanian endemics, with the exception of S. crispissima Dressler, widepread from southern Mexico to Panama. One Costa Rican specimen of S. crispissima is cited, from the northern Atlantic slope of the Cordillera de Talamanca, along the road from Turrialba to Siquirres (Dodson 2516, SEL); however, a second, more recently annotated specimen at MO hails from the Pacific slope of the Cordillera de Talamanca, along the trail to Cerro Chirripó (Gamboa R. 549).
"Sobralia crispissima has been confused with S. lindleyana Rchb. f. (which, presumably, also occurs in Costa Rica), but differs inter alia in its longer leaves and shorter petals; the two spp. are distinguished in a key couplet. Keys are also provided to separate the “sections, anomalous groups and species“ of Sobralia and the spp. of sect. Globosae Brieger (with only the mysteriously restored S. lancea Garay attributed to Costa Rica). Sobralia crispissima is depicted only by a close-up, color photo of a flower." - Published in The Cutting Edge, MOBOT.
Mireya Correa, Carmen Galdames, and María Stapf (2004) Catálogo de plantas vasculares de Panamá (Catalog of the Vascular Plants of Panama), Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, 600 p.
Robert L. Dressler (2002) "The major sections or groups within Sobralia, with four new species from Panama and Costa Rica, S. crispissima, S. gloriana, S. mariannae and S. nutans," in: Lankesteriana no. 5: 9-15.
Online References:
Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica: Germane Literature, Missouri Botanic Garden, in: The Cutting Edge, Volume X, Number 1, January 2003 Abstract of Dressler's 2002 paper.
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's (STRI) Herbarium - Summit Herbarium specimen collection (SCZ) and the University of Panama Herbarium (PMA); Panama species list flora distribution,
Collection
University of Florida Herbarium (FLAS) Collection Catalog,
Sobralia crispissima, FLAS 214964 -- collected 25 June 2005 by Mark Whitten 2973; Panama: Chiriqui. Obtained from Andres Maduro via Robert Dressler. Label locality is "Chiriqui: Cordillera". Flowered in cultivation at the University of Florida.
ING: Index Nominum Genericorum, URL:
http://ravenel.si.edu/botany/ing/ingForm.cfm from the U.S. National Herbarium, Dept. of Systematic Biology - Botany, Smithsonian Institution
International Plant Names Index [IPNI],
www.ipni.org
