Spotted while hiking in Florida, ID help please!
 

Hi all,

I first spotted this orchid about 6 months ago, and I've continued to hike to this spot periodically to check for blooms. Well today was my lucky day, I finally caught it in bloom! The flowers had a very faint sweet scent. The foliage is grassy with no pseudobulbs, and the plant also had a seed pod. It was growing on a dead pine tree in full sun. I've been pouring over lists of native Florida orchids and haven't had any luck with an ID. Someone suggested a type of encyclia, and the flower shape does vaguely remind me of encyclia tampensis, a common native orchid in my area. Can anyone help me figure out what this beauty is? Thanks in advance :)
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The flowers look very Cymbidium-like (especially Cym. dayanum comes to mind, leaves look similar) - certainly not native but species or hybrids in that tropical group could grow there. But the lack of pseudobulbs would rule that out, Cyms have them (but they're really small in that group, could be there and be missed) It certainly looks like whatever it is, it has made itself right at home. (If it turns out to be Cymbidium, it wouldn't be the first non-native to make itself at home in Florida)

It does look very much like the c. dayanum, thank you! Yes if the pseudobulbs are very small I could easily have missed them. Very interesting, I wish I could find out how it came to thrive in a random spot in the middle of the woods!

I am fairly certain this is C. dayanum. I seem to recall hearing that the species has naturalized some parts of Florida.

It's certainly a more benign immigrant than Burmese pythons that live in the Everglades... :biggrin:

Took a good look at my Cym. dayanum, you can't even see the pseudobulbs on the newer growths, even on the fully mature growths they are maybe an inch long pretty much surrounded by leaves. So very easy to miss.

Interesting! Thanks for the info.

---------- Post added at 06:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:22 PM ----------

Florida has it very rough with invasives! But yes, I won't be losing any sleep over a non-native orchid thriving in the woods =) Thanks again for the ID help!