Dichaea gracillima C.Schweinf. 1938 SECTION Pseudodichaea TYPE Drawing by © Schweinfurth and The Epidendra Website

Common Name The Delicate Dichaea

Flower Size .4" [1 cm]

Found in Costa Rica at elevations around 1000 to 1150 meters as a miniature to small sized, cool growing epiphyte with a caespitose to basally branching, slender, erect to arcuate stem enveloped almost completely by imbricating leaf sheath bases carrying articulate, distichous, many, erect-spreading, commonly conduplicate below the middle, narrowly linear, shortly acuminate to apiculate leaves that blooms in the fall on many, axillary, short to .4 to .48" [1 to 1.2 cm] long, single flowered inflorescence with 2 basal, imbricating, cylindrical, scarious sheaths and terminating in a scarious, shallowly infundibuliform, acute bracts which encloses the linear bracteole and carrying small, submembraneous flowers with smooth ovary and capsules.

Similar to D powellii but this one is much more slender, has narrower leaves and has an abruptly subquarate basal portion of the lip

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Bot. Mus. Leafl. 5: 98. Schweinfurth 1938 drawing fide; Ceiba Vol 5 L O Williams 1956; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Hammel, Grayum, Herrera & Zamora 2003;

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------