Goeppertia ovandensis
Goeppertia ovandensis (long known as Calathea ovandensis) is a forest-floor prayer plant of the wet lowland and foothill forests of southern Mexico, best known from the Los Tuxtlas rainforest in Veracruz where its ant-dispersed seeds and bee pollination were studied for decades. It lives with warm, very humid summers and a cooler, drier late winter, so it takes a mild seasonal swing better than most of the genus.
Where it grows wild
Rhizomatous herb of the understory and small light gaps in tall evergreen and semi-evergreen rainforest (selva alta perennifolia), riparian forest and old secondary growth; herbarium notes from Los Tuxtlas, the Tuxtepec lowlands and Chiapas all record it under mature or disturbed rainforest, often near streams and lake shores.
Recorded from 21 to about 1240 m, median 380 m; most collections are below 700 m on the Gulf slope.
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