Platystele compacta Ames 1922 SUBGEN Platystele Photo courtesy of Patricia Harding

Common Name or Meaning The Compact Platystele [Refers to the congested inflorescence]

Flower Size 1/5" [5mm]

Found in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia in wet montane forestsat elevations of 350 to 2500 meters as a miniature sized, warm to cold growing epiphyte with erect, slender, ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 thin, ribbed, imbricating sheaths carrying a single, apical, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-obovate to linear, subacute leaf that is narrowly cuneate below into the subpetiolate base and blooms on a gradually elongating, erect, slender, 4" [10 cm] long, densely many successively flowered, racemose inflorescence arising laterally from the ramicaul with thin floral bracts and is a cluster of tiny yellowish, simultaneous flowers occuring over a long period. Distinguished from others by the rather narrow linear-oblanceolate leaves, greenish-yellow spreading flowers and an inflorescence that extends longer than the length of the leaves.

Synonyms Platystele bulbinella Schlechter 1910; Pleurothallis compacta [Ames] Ames & Schweinf. 1930; *Stelis compacta Ames 1908

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 1077 Dodson 1984; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Systematics of Platystele Vol 7 1990; Orquideas de la Serrania del Baudo Misas Urreta 2006;