|
| All images and information included
in this site copyright © Francisco Miranda unless otherwise mentioned. No reproduction in whole or part without
written permission. |
|
3- LAELIA (Hadrolaelia) dayana, praestans,
pumila
We are going to start saying that we are, of course,
aware that the last trend is to treat these plants as pertaining to the genus Cattleya,
but as before, we are not going to discuss the matter as the objective here is to try to figure out how to separate
the three species and nothing more. Thus, these species are here treated as laelias, just for the sake of better
understanding what we are talking about. Although we started with the treatment of the pairs of species of Cattleya that pose identification problems, and there are a couple more of them to go through, this
particular group of species has to go with the same priority. The reason is that I found out that a lot of people,
including several AOS judges I've talked to in the past, have problems correctly identifying those three species.
So here we go. We have three species that are perfectly
distinct as soon as we know what and where to look for. We are not going to discuss in detail their geographical
distribution, so besides the map, we can only add that Laelia
dayana is from Rio de Janeiro, L. praestans is from Espírito Santo, and L. pumila
is from Minas Gerais going into Espírito Santo.
The distribution ranges of Laelia dayana and L pumila have been discussed under each species, although the distribution
area of L. pumila has been updated to give a better idea of how widespread
the species is. From the map it can be seen that Laelia
dayana and L. praestans have limited distribution areas, the first one in the mountainous area of Rio de Janeiro
and the second one in Espírito Santo. Both of them grow in shady humid forests in the respective states,
both mainly in altitudes between 800 and 1200 m. (about 2,650 and 4,000 ft.) , rarely out of this range. Laelia pumila, on the other hand, inhabits a wider range of habitats, and especially in the northernmost
part of its range can be found growing under much dryer conditions and exposed to a lot more light. There is a
small area in Espírito Santo where Laelia
praestans and L. pumila can be found nearby and, according to some locals, growing together. That said, we can
concentrate on what are the differences between the species.
Here we have pictures of the regular color forms
of the three species, and in Laelia
praestans and L. pumila there are two pictures to illustrate extremes of variation on flower form. Laelia dayana is very uniform, so one picture should be enough to show how the flowers look like. There
are several color forms on each species, and all of them have alba and coerulea. These won't be pictured here as the features of the flowers of each species are present
on the color forms also - except that, of course, there are no veinings on the alba flowers.
|
|
|
|
Laelia dayana
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Laelia praestans
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Laelia pumila
|
Looking at these pictures, some things get quite clear.
The first is that, although there can be a huge degree of variation on each species, each of them have features
that are exclusive. The moment we see these features, things get really easy. So, flowers of Laelia dayana always have the petals fairly reflected back, and the lips always have a very dark rim
and very clear dark longitudinal stripes in them; the other two species don't have these features. Laelia praestans always have the petals flattened and facing upwards, and the lips are "S"shaped
seen from the side (something impossible to see on frontal pictures). Most importantly, though, the side lobes
are always well rolled one over the other giving the lips the shape of "rolled tubes"; the other two
species have none of these features. Finally, flowers of Laelia pumila
have petals that are "droopy" (from a bit to a lot), regardless of how round the flowers are (and here
we can see a regular one and an exceptional one). The side lobes of the lips usually touch together but rarely
roll over the other (and when they do, it's only slightly as can be seen on the right side picture). So, as soon
as we pay attention to these features, it gets very easy to separate them. There are other features that set the
three of them apart, especially the distribution and shape of the lip keels. These will be described in the features
table below. As a final note, blooming season is very similar for all of them, and usually occurs by the end of
Summer and throughout the Fall and even Winter.
|
Laelia dayana
|
Laelia praestans
|
Laelia pumila
|
| Petals fairly horizontal and reflected back, quite
narrow. |
Petals upright, usually flat and wide. |
Petals downwards, usually flat and wide. |
| Lips large, with dark and very contrasting and defined
purple ring. Clear purple veins in the white tube. |
Lips sigmoid and fairly small, color not very contrasting
and markings not very clear. Yellow to dark orange-brown tube. |
Lips medium-sized to small, best proportion in the
group. Well-defined purple ring on front, white to yellow tube. |
| Long, flat and not much raised longitudinal keels in
tube, coinciding with the purple veins. That is, purple keels then, very contrasting with the white tube. |
Even number of low longitudinal keels in tube, usually
four, difficult to see as lips are narrow and colors are not clearly separated. No veins inside the tube or anywhere
in the lip for that matter. |
Odd number of keels in tube, a very easy to see central
one and two, three or four on each side, shorter and lower. These, including the central one, are flattened and
usually raised at their front end resulting in flat, raised "teeth". |
|
