Platystele ovatilabia (Ames & C. Schweinf.) Garay 1974
Photo by © Eric Hunt
Photo by © Ruben Senes and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Photo by © Denis Elizado and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Drawing by Carl Luer
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Common Name The Ovate Lip Platystele
Flower Size .01" [2.5 mm]
Found in Mexico, Guattemala, Beliza, Honduras, Costa Rica and to Panama in cloud forests at elevations of 900 to 1300 meters as a miniature sized, caespitose, warm to cool growing epiphyte with an erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by 2 to 3 tubular sheaths with a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-obovate, subacute to obtuse leaf that is narrowly cuneate into the indistinct petiole that blooms on an erect, slender, 2.2 to 2.4" [5.5 to 6 cm] long including the 1 to 1.2" [2.5 to 3 cm] long peduncle, racemose, successively many flowered inflorescence with hyaline bracts and 4 to 5 simuiltaneously opening flowers that are held well above the leaves and occur in the spring and summer.
"Characterized by the small habit, narrowly obovate leaves, a subdense, erect raceme that surpasses the leaf and produces several, minute, yellowish flowers simultaneously, with ovate, obtuse sepals, acute petals and an ovate, cellular-papillose lip as large as the lateral sepals." Luer 1990
CAUTION I am not entirely happy with this determination as the lip shows a circle at the base instead of a line. Please use with caution.
Synonyms *Pleurothallis ovatilabia Ames & C. Schweinf. 1930
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; The Orchids of Panama L.O. Williams & P Allen 1946 as Pleurothallis ovatilabia Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VII Systematics of Platystele Luer 1990 drawing has a circle instead of a line on the lip base good otherwise; Icones Orchidacearum 5 - 6 Orchids of Mexico Part 2 - 3 Plate 637 Hagsater & Soto 2002 drawing has a circle instead of a line on the lip base good otherwise; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003; Orchid Digest Vol 80 #1 2016 photo fide; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018; Vanishing Beauty, Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 2 Lacaena to Pteroglossa Pupulin 2020 photo fide
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