Platystele microtatantha (Schltr.) Garay 1967
Photos by © Daniel Jimenez
Drawing by Carl Luer
to EARLY
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, 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 in the winter and early spring on a erect, slender, .8" [2 cm] long including the .4" [1 cm] long peduncle, 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, shorer than the pedicel floral bracts.
"In spite of the extremely small flowers P microtantha is easily distinguished by the comparitively large, flat, triangular callis occupying most of the basal portion of the lip. The callus, however, is not as wide as the blade of the lip. The column streching over the callis is unusually elongate for the genus. A similar species is P schneideri with a broadoer callus of the lip, is widely distributed throughout Columbia.
Synonyms *Pleurothallis microtatantha Schltr. 1907; Pleurothallis perparva Standl. & L.O.Williamms 1953
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1378 Atwood 1989 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VII Systematics of Platystele Luer 1990 drawing fide; Field Guide to the Orchids of Costa Rica and Panama Dressler 1993; Orchid Digest Vol 63 #3 1999 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 72 No 10 2003 photo; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003 drawing fide; Vanishing Beauty, Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 2 Lacaena to Pteroglossa Pupulin 2020 photo fide
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