Trichosalpinx patula Luer 1998 SUBGENUS Trichosalpinx
Photo courtesy of Andy's Orchids Copyright © 2002 All rights reserved.
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
to 
Common Name or Meaning The Open Trichosalpinx [refers to the wide open flowers]
Flower Size 1/5" [5 mm]
Found in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia in wet montane forests at elevations of 650 to 2250 meters as a miniature sized, warm to cold growing epiphyte with ascending to pendant, slender, flexuous ramicauls enveloped basally by 5 to 12 lepanthiform sheaths with long, oblique, dilated, ciliate ostia and carries a single, apical, suberect to pendant, coriaceous, elliptical to narrowly elliptical, acute leaf that is cuneate below into a petiole and blooms at most any time of the year arising from near the apex of the ramicaul on a congested, distichous, .8" [2 cm] long, simultaneously few to several flowered, racemose inflorescence.
"Similar to T dependens but differs in the usually larger plant with stouter ramicauls and narrower leaves, the gaping flowers are generally larger. The sepals are similarly connate below the middle but they are recurved above the middle without forming a concave synsepal, the only distinctive difference. T blaisdelli is also similar but the most distinctive difference is T patula has the pair of basal labellar lobules which in T patula and T dependens are relatively large and obliquely spreading from the basal angles. The column of T patula is winged above the middle and the apex is simply bidentate, not mintuely denticulate or fringed as in T blaisdelli." Luer 1997
Synonyms Pendusalpinx patula (Luer) Karremans & Mel.Fernández 2018
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR ; Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 6 Dunsterville & Garay 1976 as Pleurothallis blaisdellii drawing fide; An Illustrated Field Guide Vol 3 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 as Pleurothallis blaisdellii drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XV Systematics of Trichosalpinx Luer 1997 drawing ok; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVI Systematics of Pleurothallis SUBGEN Crocodeilanthe, Rhynchopera and Talpinaria Luer 1998 corrigenda; Orchids of Venezuela [An illustrated field guide] Vol. 3 Ramiro and Carnevali 2000 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum Plate 794 Bennett & Christenson 2001 drawing fide; Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana Vol 7 Steyermark, Berry, Yatskievych and Holst 2003; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 photo not; Orchid Species Of Peru Zelenko & Bermudez 2009 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 88 #5 2019 photo fide;
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