Octomeria portillae Luer & Hirtz 2004 Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuador Orchid Website

Drawing Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name or Meaning Portilla's Octomeria [Ecuadorian Nurseryman Current]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect, ramicauls enveloped by 5 shredded, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute, narrowly cuneate below into the sessile base leaf that blooms in the fall on a congested fascile of .04" [1 mm] long, simultaneously several flowered inflorescence with dry imbricating, as long as the pedicel floral bracts.

"Similar florally and vegetatively to O parvula but differs in the broader lip with low rounded, lateral lobes and a short, broad claw instead of a narrower lip with erect, lateral lobes and a narrower longer claw in O parvula." Luer 2010

There are 2 more species from the Andes with narrow leaves less than .4" [1 cm] wide, Octomeria doucetteana and O moscosoae.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVI Pleurothallis subgenus Acianthera and Three Allied subgenera, A Second Century of new Species of Stelis of Ecuador, Epibator, Ophidion and Zootrophion Luer 2004 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXI Luer 2010 drawing fide;

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