Platystele stevensonii Luer 1977

TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer and the Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

Common Name Stevenson's Platystele [American Orchid Enthusiast, Past president of the AOS and discoverer of species died 1994]

Flower Size .4" [1 cm]

Found in southern Ecuador at elevations of 950 to 1750 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls envelopoed by 2 to 3, thin, ribbed, imbricating sheaths and carrying a single, apical, coriaceous, narrowly elliptic-obovate, subacute to obtuse, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms at most any time of the year on a lateral from the ramicaul, erect to suberect, peduncle to .8" [2 cm] long, filiform, loose, distichous, flexuous, 2 to 6" [5 to 15 cm] long overall, successively single, many flowered inflorescence with an oblique floral bract.

"Recognized by the hairlike racemes of spindly flowers, with the narrowly ovate, acuminate sepals amd petals minutely ciliate and the fleshy, elliptical lip with a rounded apex." Luer 1990

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VII Systematics of Platystele Luer 1990 drawing fide;

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