Tetramicra canaliculata(Aubl.) Urb.

serpentine wallflower orchid

WFO wfo-0000321621 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Tetramicra canaliculata, photographed by lallen
fig. a lallen, CC0 1.0 / 2012-04-20 / obs. 115469090
Tetramicra canaliculata, photographed by lallen
fig. b lallen, CC0 1.0 / obs. 115469100
Tetramicra canaliculata, photographed by Steven Bachman
fig. c Steven Bachman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 961829

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 8 botanical countries

Regions where Tetramicra canaliculata is native: Florida, Dominican Republic, French Guiana, Haiti, Leeward Is., Puerto Rico, Trinidad-Tobago, Windward Is. FloridaDominican RepublicFrench GuianaHaitiPuerto RicoTrinidad-Tobago Leeward Is.Windward Is.
Native distribution of Tetramicra canaliculata, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Dominican Republic DOM SOUTHERN AMERICA
French Guiana FRG
Haiti HAI
Leeward Is. LEE
Puerto Rico PUE
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Windward Is. WIN
Florida FLA NORTHERN AMERICA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Also published as 15 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Bletia rigida (Willd.) Rchb.f.
  • Bletia schomburgkii Rchb.f.
  • Bletia subaequalis (Eggers) Rchb.f.
  • Brassavola elegans (Ham.) Hook.
  • Brassavola rigida (Willd.) Bold.
  • Cymbidium rigidum Willd.
  • Cyrtopodium elegans Ham.
  • Epidendrum canaliculatum (Aubl.) Poir.
  • Epidendrum subaequale Eggers
  • Limodorum canaliculatum Aubl.
  • Oncidium elegans (Ham.) Beer
  • Tetramicra elegans (Ham.) Cogn.
  • Tetramicra elegans Fedde
  • Tetramicra rigida (Willd.) Lindl.
  • Tetramicra schomburgkii (Rchb.f.) Rolfe

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.