Platythelys venustula (Ames) Garay 1977

Drawing by © Fritz Hamer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

TYPE Drawing of Erytrodes cornejoi

Drawing by © Calaway Dodson

Common Name The Small Pretty Platythelys

Flower Size .08" [2 mm]

Found in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador in shady wet montane forests on steep slopes at elevations around 200 to 1000 meters as a miniature sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte with an erect stem carrying several, pale green, ovate-elliptic, acute, gradually narrowing below into the clasping, petiolate base leaves that blooms in the fall and winter on an erect, terminal, 6 to 8" [15 to 20cm] long, few to several flowered inflorescence

Often cited as a variety of P querticola but differs in the smaller weaker plant that grows on trees as an epiphyte, has large floral bracts and an apex of the lip that is not three lobed but at most apiculate.

Synonyms Aspidogyne venustula (Ames) Meneguzzo 2012; Erythrodes cornejoi Dodson 1997; Erythrodes querceticola var. venustula (Ames) Correll 1947; Erythrodes venustula (Ames) Ames 1915; *Physurus venustulus Ames 1908;

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Studies in the Family Orchidaceae Fascile 2 Ames 1908 as Physurus venustulus; Studies in the Family Orchidaceae Vol 3 Ames 1908 as pHYSURUS VENUSTULUS DRAWING FIDE; Icones Plantarum Tropicarum Plate 1082 Hamer 1982 drawing fide; Orquideologia Vol 20 #2 1997 as Erythrodes cornejoi drawing fide; Manual De Plants De Costa Rica Vol III Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003 as Erythrodes venustula; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018

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