Physosiphon punctulatus Rchb.f. 1866
Photo by © Piotr Markiewicz
Common Name The Spotted Physosiphon
Flower Size .15" [3mm]
Found in Huehuetenango department of Guatemala, Honduras and Cartago and San Jose provinces Costa Rica in humid seasonally dry oak forests at elevations of 1800 to 1900 meters as a minature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with subterete ramicauls enveloped basally by scarious, tubular, carinate, apiculate sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, elliptic to oblanceolate, round, mucronate, green, underside very brilliant, sulcate, very succulent, rigid, abruptly narrowing below into the channeled, elongate petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on 1 to 2, elongating, erect-arcuate, eventually hanging, filiform, rather loose, subdistichous, to 2 to 7.6" [5 to 19 cm] long, to 50 flowered inflorescence with thin, as long as the pedicel floral bracts.
" Distinguished by the small habit, thick, petioalte, short stemmed leaves and a simultaneously and successively flowered raceme that far exceeds the leaves. The small, fleshy, yellow and purplish mottled or spotted sepals are connate half their length into a braod, non-constricted tube with the thick, free portions not widely spread. The petals are short and ellipticc and the lip is thick and oblong witha verrucose apex." Luer 2006
Synonyms Lomax punctulata (Rchb.f.) Luer 2006; Physosiphon cooperi Ames 1922; Physosiphon minor Rendle 1900; Pleurothallis minor (Rendle) L.O.Williams 1950; Specklinia minor (Rendle) Luer 2004; Stelis punctulata (Rchb.f.) Soto Arenas 2002 publ. 2003
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Bot. Zeitung (Berlin) 24: 385 Rchb.f 1866;
Refugium Botanicum Reichenbach 1869
Refugium Botanicum Reichenbach 1869 drawing ok;
J. Bot. 38: 275 Rendle 1900 as P minor;
Die Orchideen Schlechter 1915 as P minus;
Schedul. Orchid. 1: 2 Ames 1922 as P cooperi;
Ceiba 1: 186 L O Williams 1950 as Pleurothallis minor;
Orchids of Venezuela, An Illustrated Field Guide Vol 3 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 drawing ok;
Orchids of Venezuela [An illustrated field guide] Vol. 3 Ramiro and Carnevali 2000 as Pleurothallis punctulatus drawing ok;
Icones Orchidacearum 5-6 Plate 690 Hagsater & Soto 2002 as Stelis punctulatus drawing fide;
Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003 as Pleurothallis minor;
Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------