Platystele calantha P.Ortiz 1978 SUBGEN Platystele Photo courtesy of Patricia Harding

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Common Name The Beautiful Flower Platystele [refers to the large sized flower that you can actually see without magnification]

Flower Size 2/5" [1 cm]

Found in Colombia and Ecuador at elevations of 800 meters as a miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 thin, ribbed, imbricating sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute leaf that is narrowly cuneate into the indistinct petiole and blooms on an erect to suberect, 1" [2.5 cm] long, congested, successively several flowered, racmose inflorescence arising laterallyfrom the ramicaul and having oblique floral bracts.

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Systematics of Platystele Vol 7 1990; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003;

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