Platystele microtatantha (Schltr.) Garay 1967 SUBGEN Platystele

Plant and Flowers Photos by © Walter Schug and His MesoAmerican Orchid Page

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Common Name The Small Flowered Platystele

Flower Size 1/8" [3 mm]

Found in Costa Rica and Panama at elevations of 1400 to 2000 meters as a miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 thin, ribbed, imbricating sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly-elliptical-obovate, subacute, narrowly cuneate into the petiolate base leaf that blooms on a erect, slender, 3/4" [20 mm] long, distichous, flexuous, subdense, successively several to many flowered, racemose inflorescence with only 1 to 2 flowers open at any one time arising from low on the ramicaul, and has thin floral bracts.

Synonyms *Pleurothallis microtatantha Schltr. 1907; Pleurothallis perparva Standl. & L.O.Williamms 1953

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum---VII. Systematics of Platystele (Orchidaceae) Luer 1990; Field Guide to the Orchids of Costa Rica and Panama Dressler 1993 ; AOS Bulletin Vol 72 No 10 2003 photo