Psychilis macconnelliae Sauleda (1988), a plant with a pure white lip that is not an alba form, from St. Croix Virgin Islands

One of the defining characteristics of Psy. macconnelliae is its large pink lip.  This particular plant is notable for having a pure white lip.   The plant is not an alba form since you can see it can produce pink pigments by the color of the column of the flower.  It is from the island of St. Croix, where there are large populations of this orchid growing near the seaside.  Generally, in Psychilis species one can see a degree of intraspecific variation in color of the flowers.  But the only other plants with a pure white lip I have seen are the alba forms of Psy, krugii.   For a view of the usual color of the flowers of Psy. macconelliae, use the following link:  https://ricardogupi.blogspot.com/2013/08/psychilis-macconnelliae-from-st-croix.html

Psychilis krugii (Bello) Sauleda 1988, 'Machiavelli' CHM/AOS, a yellow flower with just the faintest hint of purple in the lip

Psychilis krugii Sauleda, Psy kraenzlinii (Bello) Sauleda y Psy. x raganii

Psy. x raganii, hybrid of Psy. kraenzlinii and Psy. krugii

Psy. kraenzlinii

Psy. krugii

Psychilis x raganii Sauleda, I photographed several plants to see the flower variation

These orchids were growing in the eroded face of a hill, under and between spiny bushes and stunted trees.  The substrate was mud and loose stone, a mixture that made walking around challenging and dangerous.  The angle of the side of the hill varied between 45 and 60 degrees.  In some spots the bushes were a solid impassable mass.  In the steepest places there were no plants at all but only bare rock.  Most of the area was a crazy quilt of continuos vegetation, eroded spots, bare rock places and stunted grass patches.

Psychilis x raganii Sauleda, a follow up visit to the population I visited in 2013

I visited this population of orchids for the first time back in 2013.  Today I checked on it and was pleased to find that the plants are still doing well. The plants were blooming and I saw seed pods and seedlings. There seems to be fewer plants in places where they can be easily seen from the trail but that might just be because aren't as many plant flowering now as when I first visited.  The place seems little changed.  However, before I got to the place where the orchids are I had to wade through a veritable sea of neck tall grass, Panicum maximum.  There may be that coming next dry season the area will be very fire prone due to large amount of dry grass present.  However the orchids are growing higher in the mountain in a place so dry that the grass is stunted, small and inhibited from growing by the abundant spiny bushes.  You can read about my first visit to the place where these orchids grow here.  http://ricardogupi.blogspot.com/2013/10/psychilis-x-raganii-serendipitious.html

Psychilis monensis Sauleda 1988, a pink flower

There are vast populations of this orchid in Mona Island, between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola.  There is some variation in the color of the flowers.  I found this pink flower deep in the forests of the east part of the island.  Most flowers of this species have either greenish or pale cream or yellow flower segments.

Psychilis monensis, an orange yellow form of this variable species, photographed "in situ" very deep into the interior of Mona Island.

This orchid is locally common, and sometimes downright abundant in certain parts of Mona Island.  This species produces flowers that can vary in color and markings between different plants.   This particular plant has orange yellow floral segments framing a richly colored lip.

Psychilis monensis Sauleda 1988, a strange flower with unusually shaped floral parts.

The island of Mona, is in the middle of the Mona Channel, this is between the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.  The whole island is a wildlife reserve.  Although to most people this deserted island looks pristine, this is an illusion.  The island was subjected to different types of exploitation for centuries.  Its native flora and fauna was often severely damaged both by humans and by introduced animals.

But in the latter part of the twenty century the island was left alone to recuperate and nature is healing the scars left by Man.  The island has several species of orchids, the most abundant by far is Psychilis monensis.  I have seen places in the island where these orchids are downright abundant.  In habitat that is in good condition, large plants of this species can be found growing around the bases of shrubs.  But you can also find these orchids growing on the rocks, on cactus and on living or dying trees.

The flowers of this species vary in color and shape, even when you look at a small area, neighboring plants can have flowers that are noticeably different.  When I visit the island I am always on the look for variants that I have not seen before.  In the case of this particular plant, I found it while hiking deep into the interior of the island.  The plant is growing up on a tree but the inflorescence hangs down so that the flowers are at an eye height.

The flower has an asymmetrical lip, in itself this is a curiosity,  But the main oddity is a second small half lip pointing up from the right side of the flower.  None of the other flower segments is quite right.   I was in the spot where this plant grows for only a short time, I was unable to ascertain if this was a single occurrence or that the plant produced all its flowers like this.  Given the difficulty of reaching the spot where this plant grows, it is unlikely another person has come across this plant.  If I have the opportunity I will try to return to the place to see if it normally produces flowers like this.

Psychilis kraenzlinii (Bello) Sauleda 1988, from the north coast of Puerto Rico

This is Psychilis x raganii, sometimes shown as Psy. kraenzlinii Note the different coloring

These are the first flowers of Psychilis kraenzlinii I have been able to see in its native habitat.  These flowers are from the north coast, near the town of Isabela in Puerto Rico.   It is not easy to see these plants in the wild, the habitat they favor, near the coast, is also a favorite of humans, which means where there were strand of native vegetation there are now vacation homes near the beach.  Also people will collect these plants from the wild, which means that if you are in a place where humans have easy access the probability of seeing these plants in the wild is essentially nil.

I had seen these plants previously in orchid shows but never in their natural haunts.  Unfortunately these plants almost always die in captivity, due to the lack of knowledge of their cultural needs buy the people that collected them.  Paradoxically, all the ones I have seen that survived in captivity where in the hands of people that just tied them to a tree and essentially ignored them. 

There are exceptions to this rule as I have seen one or two large specimen plants in local exhibitions.  However I have been unable to talk with the owners of the large plants, so perhaps they way they cultivated the plants was to give them careful neglect.  

Psychilis kraenzlinii is sometimes confused with Psy. x raganii.  The two orchids are similar, their main difference is their color and in technical details of the callus of the lip.  Psy, raganii has a reddish color as you can see in the photo.

Flower variability "in situ" in a Psychilis macconnelliae Sauleda 1988 population in a small area of coastal habitat in St. Croix

On April 6, 2014, I had the privilege to visit a reserve in St. Croix that hosts a population of Psychilis macconnelliae.  The dry coastal vegetation in which this orchid lives is composed mainly of low woody shrubs and scattered trees.  This type of habitat is hardly welcoming, with many thorny plants and vines that make it at times almost impassable.   The orchids were growing close to the beach.  The strong wind from the sea made taking good photos a difficult challenge as it would shake the flowers even when pains were taken to keep the inflorescence still.    The constant, and at times strong, wind keeps the local temperature from approaching the furnance like feeling one gets in other Caribbean islands in similar habitat but in less windy locations.  The temperature was in the eighties at the moment I visited.  

Because moving in the bush was not a pleasant or easy undertaking, I was only able to see the plants in a very limited area in the time I had to look for them.  However, in the small patch I was able to explore I found many plants.  Happily I was even able to locate plants I had seen during a visit I made last year.  The variability of the flowers surprised me, one would expect that plants growing in such proximity of each other would have flowers that would look very similar.  But this was not the case.  Every parameter of the flowers seemed to show some degree of variation among the ones I photographed.  One thing I can attest, these plants are indeed quite successful at attracting pollinators, seedpods were everywhere.  Here are photos of some of the flowers I saw.

Psychilis x raganii, the serendipitious discovery of a rarely photographed orchid

About a year ago I heard from a friend that he had found a population of Psychilis kraenzlinii in the southwest of the island.   He gave me the directions but it turned out that finding the plants was a lot harder than just arriving at the place.   Coordinating a joint visit to the site turned out to be an almost impossible task due to our very different work schedules and the fact that we live pretty far away from each other.

But recently we managed to find time to visit the place.  The orchids are not located in an area legally protected by the state as a natural area, but paradoxically, it is better protected that some orchids in state forests by simple dint of being located by the treacherous terrain and the difficulty getting there. No, I won’t reveal where it is, as I am sure collectors would clear the spot in a hurry. Even a single determined person could severely damage this population.

When I arrived at the area where the orchids live I found it was quite unlike any other orchid habitat I had visited before.  Rather than pristine habitat, it turned out to be a crazy kilt landscape of secondary scrubby vegetation, patches of woodland, cow pastures and places where (for inexplicable reasons) every bit of plant cover has been scrapped away until the bedrock as exposed.    Amid all this a reasonably healthy population of plants survived. 

How could this be so?  I think there are several reasons for the survival of this population of orchids.  First, the plants are not visible from the road.   My suspicion is that any plant that blooms near the road is quickly collected.   Second, the area has an impressive density of poisonous, spiny and toxic plants, making even a short hike a thoroughly unpleasant not to say unhealthy experience.   Third, the ground in the spot where the orchids grow is uneven and covered everywhere with a loose rocky soil that makes walking hard and that can cause a nasty fall. By the way, did I mention the rocks are sharp edged, I learned this the hard way.  In essence the plants survive because they are not collected and the spot where they grow is inimical to human presence.

I was overjoyed when I saw the plants thinking I had found Psy. kraenzlinii, but when I got closer to them it was clear to me that some were different from the typical kraenzlinii under cultivation.   Their orange-red color of the flowers and the yellow tint of the columns was unlike anything I seen before.  Intrigued, I took photos of the flowers of as many plants as I could to get an idea of the variability of the population.  When I got home I checked the volume six of Carl Withner’s book, Cattleyas and their relatives.¹  From there I got the ID of these orchids.  It turned out that at least one of the plants was not Psy. kraenzlinnii but Psy. x raganii.

Psy. x raganii is a hybrid of Psy. kraenzlinii and Psy. krugii, it occurs where the distribution of both species overlap.   I have never seen any plant of this hybrid under cultivation and I could locate only a single photo of this species on the Internet.  This hybrid was described in 1988 by Ruben Sauleda.     Psy x raganii. has a smaller flower size than kraenzlinii, the callus of the midlobe of the labellum is yellow or pale rose carmine to white and basally broader.²

¹ Withner, Carl. 1996. Cattleyas and their relatives, volume VI, The Bahamian and Caribbean species.

² Sauleda, Ruben. 1988. Phytologya 65(1): 1-33.

Psychilis krugii, a form of the species with no purple color.

Psychilis krugii is an orchid that is endemic of Puerto RIco, it is mostly found in the southwestern part of the island.  In the 2012 PR orchid society show there was an area dedicated to native orchids. Among the various species on display there was this plant of Psychilis krugii with white green flowers.  The flower lacked the characteristic purple red colors that typical Psy, krugii has on the column and the lip.   Typically plants that lack anthocyanins, and therefore are green/white are classified as albas.  But taxonomic rules are explicit, you just describe a plant as "var. alba" if there is just a single plant of the type, as this classification implies that there are a number of plants that share the alba characteristic, not just a single clone.   When I saw this plant I thought it was a very rare mutation, since I had never seen one on the wild, but since then, thanks to facebook, I have seen photos elsewhere of plants that look identical to this one, including a plant "in situ".   I have a botanist friend that is already interested in this orchid so we hopefully we will see a description of it in the future.

Psychilis macconelliae, a comparison between a plant seen in Puerto Rico and those seen in St. Croix.

In the above picture you can see a plant of Psychilis macconnlliae I photographed at an orchid show in Puerto Rico.  I have seen pink colored flowers like this in the island of Culebra, which is to the east of Puerto Rico.  When I visited St. Croix early in 2013, I found the Psychilis macconnelliae differed in color from those in Puerto Rico.  Particularly the sepals and petals had a different color from those that I have seen in Puerto Rico.  

The difference is interesting, however it has to be noted that the plants that usually show up at orchid shows sometimes are not typical representatives of the species. Orchid growers have a clear preference for strickingly colored forms and unusual plants and as a result  of this, the cultivated strains of certain species hardly bear even a passing resemblace to the average plant of the same species in the wild.  Hopefully in the future I will be able to visit Culebra and Vieques and take photos of Psy. macconnelliae in the wild.

Psytonia Caribbean Jewels 'E Orchids Little Ruby' AM/AOS, a rare hybrid of Psychilis macconnelliae and Broughtonia sanguinea

This interesting plant is an hybrid of Psychilis macconnelliae (which was the seed parent) and Broughtonia sanguinea (which was the pollen parent).  It was registered in 2004 by J. R. Fernandez..  We can see that the influence of the Psychilis parent was overwhelming, you would have a hard time guessing which was the other parent from looking at this plant.  The color is highly reminiscent of Psychilis kraenzlinii, however the flower size and shape clearly distinguishes it from that species.  The white spot on the lip makes me suspect that the Puerto Rican plant of macconnelliae was used on this hybrid rather than a plant from St. Croix.  Hybrids with Psychilis are uncommon, in the ones that I have seen, the Psychilis influence is very dominant.

This hybrid was exhibited by Edwin Alberto Perez.  I want to thank Irma Saldana because she helped me find the information and parentage of this hybrid as registed on the Royal Horticultural Society.

Psychilis macconnelliae, from St. Croix in the Virgin Islands

In January of 2013 I had the pleasure to visit the island of Saint Croix.  I was invited by Edna Hamilton (the President of the St. Croix Orchid society), to talk about the culture of Dendrobium species and hybrids.  I took advantage of the occasion to see the forests and beaches of St. Croix.  This, of course, included looking out for orchid plants in bloom to photograph.   I had the pleasure to spend some time talking to Mike Evans the wildlife manager of the Sandy Point national wildlife refuge.  We know each other from pretty far back, in fact he worked for the Puerto Rican Parrot project (the project in which I work now) when it was starting back in the seventies.  I also met Rudy O’Reilly (President of the St. Croix Bonsai Society), which studied at the Mayaguez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico at the same time I was studying there.  But I digress, let’s go back to the orchids.

I saw a population of Psychilis macconnealliae growing on low bushes over sandy soil.  Most of the plants were growing a few inches over the sand, perching near the base of low bushes.  The condition of the plants was variable, the healthiest ones I found were growing on larger bushes and were not too close to the soil.  The larger plants were those that were sheltered from the sunlight by a layer of leaves that was not so dense as cast a deep shadow.  Plants growing exposed to full sunlight looked stunted and had lots of anthocyanin in the leaves giving them a reddish coloring.  I didn’t find any really big, multi-pseudobulb plants, but this is probably a consequence of the fact that my schedule only allowed me to see a small patch of their habitat. 

I visited their habitat in the morning so that I didn’t experience the worst of the heat and sunlight, but it is clear that the climatic and environmental conditions in which the plant grow in St. Croix is pretty much the same as that in which other Psychilis grow.   From looking at the way the plants grow in the wild I can assert with confidence that these orchids would surely die under the care of the average hobbyist.   I can think of nothing more lethal for these plants than putting them in a bark filled pot and keeping them slightly moist (a common recommendation about watering orchids on older orchid books).   By the way, I don’t collect wild orchids, I prefer to enjoy them in their natural habitat.  If you are doing botanical research on orchids and want access to plants of these species, I advise you contact Prof. Ackerman from the University of Puerto Rico.

Although, from time to time, you can see clones of Psychilis macconelliae exhibited in orchid shows in Puerto Rico, all the ones I have seen are from Vieques Island or from Puerto Rico.  The St, Croix Psy. macconnelliae is quite distinct in color and easily distinguished from them.  To me the form from Puerto Rico and the form St. Croix look more different from each other than Psychilis monensis and Psychilis krugii from Puerto Rico.  But this is work for a taxonomist, perhaps one day someone will look at this question.

Psychilis monensis some observations of plants "in situ"

This form has a flat open flower with green sepals and petals

Cream colored flowers

Yellowish nodding, slightly cupped flowers
 with lips whose sides curl back

Relatively shorter lip on green flower

An inflorescence with five open flowers

A very pale form with cupped sepals

Seed capsule

The orchid Psychilis monensis is endemic of the island of Mona.  Mona Island sits in the Mona channel which located is between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.  Mona Island is a deserted island only inhabited by a few personnel of the department of natural and environmental resources of Puerto Rico.  It is visited by fishermen hunters and campers but lately, mainly due to a number of deaths on the island caused by sunstroke, dehydration and accidents, the number of visitors has reduced significantly.  Mona Island is part of the United States, it was ceded to the nation after the Hispano-American war along with Puerto Rico and other islands of the Puerto Rican Bank.

The main terrain in Mona Island is a flat limestone plateau mostly at an elevation of one to two hundred feet above the sea.  The island receives a comparatively low quantity of rain, 30 inches a year, and most of the vegetation is composed of drought resistant plants.  The limestone plateau is a particularly challenging place for plants to grow due the harsh conditions that prevail on it.   Most of the ground in the plateau consists of bare, rain eroded limestone, this terrain can severely damage even the most sturdy footwear faily quickly.  There are trees in the plateau but they are small and occur where there is a pocket of soil in the rocky terrain.  Sunlight is fierce and temperatures high which makes dehydration and sunstroke a constant threat.

In these surroundings, which not in the least resembles what most people think as the ideal orchid growing environment,  Psychilis monensis not only lives but thrives.   In certain parts of the islands plants are downright abundant.  I visited Mona Island in July 2012 and one of my goals was to see this orchid.  I went for a short walk to look for orchids about an hour before sunset, when temperatures are tolerable and sunlight is considerably reduced in intensity.  I found that in a particular area of low shrubs these orchids were exceedingly common.  Many shrubs had Psychilis growing in the middle of them, some of the plants were large specimens.  In the largest plants almost every pseudobulb had an inflorescence.

Psychilis plants were growing everywhere in this area, on the ground, on cacti, on dead or dying trees and on the bare rock.  However plants exposed all the time to full sun were stunted, with reddish leaves and few if any inflorescences.  Plants growing in soil seemed in worse shape than either those in bare rock or growing as epiphytes.  In fact a number of the plants that were located directly in contact with soil were dying or had dead parts.   The largest and healthiest plants were those located one or two feet over the ground on a shrub that shielded the plant from the worst of the midday sunlight and yet allowed a considerable amount of sunlight to pass through.

The flowers of Psy. monensis are surprisingly variable.  I heard a presentation where a student that had done some field research argued that this was due to the fact that they don’t give a reward to pollinators and they need to have variability so that potential pollinators won’t learn to avoid them before pollination is affected.   Unfortunately my camera stopped working on my second day in Mona so I have only a few photos of the flowers of this orchid, taken on a small area near the Sardine Beach.  Nevertheless I saw a bit of the variation that one can see in the whole island.  In the flowers I saw the floral parts could be short or long, perpendicular to the lip or almost parallel to it, green, pinkish white or pale yellow.  The lip could be richly colored, white, long, short, flat or with its sides recurved back.  Some flowers were nodding with the lip hanging straight down and others held the lip almost horizontal.  The inflorescences can bloom repeatedly, I saw one with evidence of having bloomed six or seven times.

No other orchid compares in abundance with Psychilis in Mona island.  You can find a few plants of Domingoa here and there, Oeceoclades in forested areas of the coast and Vanilla, Tolumnia and Broughtonia in particular locales in the interior of the island, but all of the previous orchids have a patchy distribution and, when compared to Psychilis, take an effort to find.  I have read accounts of orchid collectors from the eighteen and nineteen century that remark on finding orchids in the hundreds and even in the thousands growing all over the landscape.  In Mona Island you can still see a glimmer of how a pristine orchid population looked to those early explorers.

 Happily the orchids of Mona Island are pretty safe from human depredations and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.  The main thing that protects these orchids is that the average orchidist reaction to the flowers of Psychilis is probably “meh”.   The relatively small flowers of Psychilis can hardly compete, in the eyes of an average orchidist, with the very many brightly colored, large flowered hybrids that are currently the norm in the orchid market.  I know that visitors occasionally take plants, but this collecting doesn’t seem to make even the tiniest noticeable dent in this orchid population and must be very light indeed as you can find large plants at a few minute walk from the camping grounds, something that would not happen if any amount of collecting was happening as usually it is the largest and most handsome plants the ones that are collected first.  Without a doubt probably almost all of the plants that have been taken from the island have died.  In all my years of orchid growing I have only seen a single plant of Psychilis monensis growing successfully out of Mona Island.  It was twenty years ago in Cupey, in the garden of a non-orchidist that had tied the plant to a wooden post in his garden when he had arrived back from a visit to Mona and had subsequently given it absolutely no care or attention to it.  I have heard that there are a few plants in cultivation, but unlike Psy. kranzlinii, Psy. macconellia and Psy. krugi which show up regularly in orchid shows, I have yet to see a Psy.  monensis at a show.  My suspicion is that Psychilis monensis just can’t survive the way in which most orchidist treat their plants as it is radically different from what these plants experience in their natural habitat.

This Psychilis is so common in its habitat because it is supremely well adapted to conditions that few other plants can tolerate.   In the coastal areas of Mona, where conditions are much more moderate you are hard pressed to find plants of Psychilis growing anywhere.   These plants have adapted to high levels of sunlight, strong desiccating winds and weeks or even months without any measurable rain.    Move a plant such as this to a shady, humid spot with stagnant air where it gets drenched with water every two or three days and im all probably it won’t survive, particularly if its roots are buried in bark and kept wet all the time.  So my advice is simple, leave these plants in its natural habitat.

Large plant with many inflorescences

A common hazzard in Mona Island

Psychilis monensis inflorescenses can rebloom several times