Elleanthus blatteus Garay 1978 Photo by © Alexander Hirtz

Another Flower head Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuador Orchid Website

Common Name or Meaning The Purple Elleanthus

Flower Size .4" [1 cm]

Found in Ecuador and Peru in very wet montane forests at elevations of [600] 1100 to 2600 meters as a small to medium sized, cool to cold growing terrestrial on clay roadbanks and embankments with a slender, remotely vaginate below, few leaved above cane-like stem enveloped in the upper portion by imbricate, leaf-bearing sheaths and carrying narrowly ovate, stiffly erect, subplicate, purple veined below, narrowly lanceolate, tapering towards both ends acute basally clasping leaves that blooms in the fall on a subsessile, ovoid or subglobose, densely many flowered inflorescence with ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, imbricate floral bracts.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, *Flora of Ecuador No 9 225[1] Garay 1978 drawing fide; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 445 Dodson 1989 drawing fide; Native Orchids of Ecuador Vol 2 Dodson 2001 drawing/photo fide; Orchid Species of Peru Zelenko Bermudez 2009 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 87 225[3] Orchidaceae Dodson & Luer 2010

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