Platystele acicularis Luer & Hirtz 1990
Photo by © Wiel Driessen and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
LATER
Common Name The Sharply Pointed Platystele
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Morona-Santiago, Napo, Pastaza and Zamora-Chinchipe provinces of Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1000 to 2250 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3 thin, ribbed, imbricating sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute to obtuse, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later summer through fall on a slender, suberect, to 6" [to 15 cm] long including the 1.2 to 2" [3 to 5 cm] long peduncle, loose, flexuous, distichous, successively many flowered inflorescence arising laterally from the ramicaul and has an oblique, shorter thant he pedicel floral bract.
"Closely relateed to P pisifera and P stonyx but the large lip of P acicularis is ovoid and the apex long-attenuate and the disc superficially channeled medially. The lip of P stonyx is smaller and ledially channeled. The lip of P pisifera is ovate and acute. The sides of the lip of P acicularis seem to wrap around the margins of the blade, often meeting in the midline on the back surface. The fine pubescence of the sepals and cilia of the petals also distinguish P acicularis." Luer 1990
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VII Systematics of Platystele Luer 1990 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum plate 742 Benntt & Christenson 2001 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003 photos fide; Orchid Species of Peru Zelenkop & Bermudez 2009 photo fide;
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