Microchilus vesicifer (Rchb.f.) Ormerod 2002
photo/Drawing by © Fritz Hamer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
EARLY
Common Name The Bag Carrying Microchilus
Flower Size .08" [2 mm]
Found in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Peru in shady tropical wet forests at elevations of 1000 to 1500 as a small sized, cool growing terrestrial with a creeping then ascending rhizome giving rise to an erect stem enveloped completely by leaf sheaths carrying dark green mottled with pale green ovate-lanceolate, narrowing at both ends, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaves that blooms in the winter, spring and early summer on a terminal, erect, to 7" [to 17.5 cm] long overall, rachis, 3" [7.5 cm] long, subdensely many flowered inflorescence with 3 to 4, acuminate adpressed sheaths and pale purple, glabrous, shorter than the ovary floral bracts.
"Compared to M secundus but differing in the lip. In M secundus the apex of the lip is reduced to a crenate margined semiorbicular lobe. In M vescifer the terminal lobe being obtusely angled on each side and mucronate in the middle. Also M secudus has within the sac near the base, twelve elongated processes." Ames 1922
Synonyms Erythrodes lehmannii (Schltr.) Ames 1922; Erythrodes vesicifera (Rchb.f.) Ames 1922; Physurus lehmannii Schltr. 1918; *Physurus vesicifer Rchb.f. 1866
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI
Beitr. Orchid.-K. C. Amer.: 63 Rchb.f 1866 as Physurus vescifer;
Beih. Bot. Centralbl. 36(2): 379 Schlechter 1918 as Physurus lehmannii
Studies in the family Orchidaceae Vol VII: 71 Ames 1922 as Erythrodes lehmannii;
Studies in the family Orchidaceae Vol VII: 78 Ames 1922 as Erythrodes vescifera;
Las Orquedias de El Salvador Vol 1 Hamer 1974 as Erythrodes lehmannii drawing/photo fide;
Orchids of Guatemala & Belize: 149 Ames & Correl 1985
Orchids of Guatemala & Belize: 150 Ames & Correl 1985 drawing not!;
Icones Plantarum Tropicarum Plate 1221 Hamer 1985 as Erythrodes vesciferum drawing fide;
Selbyana Vol 10: 270 Orchids of Central America Hamer 1988 as Erythrodes vesicfera drawing fide;
* Lindleyana 17: 223 Ormerod 2002
Manual De Plants De Costa Rica Vol III Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003 as Erythrodes vesicifera;
Materials to the Orchid Flora of Colombia Vol 1: 336 Szlachetko & Kolanowska 2017 drawing fide
Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018
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