Platystele lancilabris (Rchb. f.) Schltr. 1923
Photo by Daniel Jimenez and his Orchid Photo Flickr Website
Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The Spear-Like Lip Platystele
Flower Size .2" [6mm]
Found in Costa Rica on mossy small branches in wet montane forests at elevations around 100 to 1150 meters as a miniature sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3 thin, imbricating tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-obovate, subacute to obtuse, narrowly cuneate below into the indistinct petiolate base leaf that blooms at any time of the year on an erect, strict, loose, distichous, to 3.2" [to 8 cm] long including the slender .8 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously several flowered, racemose inflorescence arising laterally from the ramicaul with oblique floral bracts.
Many sources cite this species as a synonym of P oxyglosa but I have left them separate at this time. P lancilabris differs from P oxyglossa by being endemic to Costa Rica, larger in size, a strict, nearly simultaneously opening flowering inflorescence instead of flexuous and successively flowered, The sepals and petals are acute and not acuminate and shorter than P oxyglossa as well as the lip is lanceolate, not acuminate and there is a large gelion at the base.
Synonyms Pleurothallis lancilabris (Rchb.f.) Schltr. 1913; *Stelis lancilabris Rchb.f. 1866
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Beitr. Orchid.-K. C. Amer. 94, t. 8, f. ii, 3-5. 1866. as Stelis lancilabris; * Repert. Sp. Nov. Regni. Veg. Beih. 19: 102. Costa Rica Schlechter 1923; Orchids of Guatemala and Belize Ames & Correll 1952 as pleurothallis lancilabris; Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 1 Dunsterville & Garay 1959 drawing fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 36 #9 1967; Las Orquedias De El Salvador Vol 2 Hamer 1974 drawing ok/photo hmm; Orchids of Venezuela, An Illustrated Field Guide Vol 3 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 drawing ok; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 205 Dodson 1980 drawing fide; Las Orquedias de El Salvador Vol 3 Hamer 1981 drawing ok; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1078 Hamer 1984 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VII Systematics of Platystele Luer 1990 drawing fide; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003; A Compendium Of Miniature Orchid Species Vol 2 Parsons & Gerritson 2013 photo good;
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