Platystele calantha P.Ortiz 1978
Photo by © Ramon de Bedout
Photo by © Eric Hunt
Photo by © Patricia Harding
TYPE drawing by © Padre Pedro Ortiz
Drawing by © Carl Luer
to 
Common Name The Beautiful Flowered Platystele [refers to the large sized flower that you can actually see without magnification]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Colombia and Ecuador at elevations of 500 to 1800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 thin, ribbed, imbricating sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute leaf that is narrowly cuneate into the indistinct petiole and blooms in the spring on an erect to suberect, 1" [2.5 cm] long including the .6" [1.5 cm] long peduncle, congested, successively several flowered, racmose inflorescence arising laterally from the ramicaul and having oblique, shorter than the epdicel floral bracts.
"The simple sepals and petals are yellow-white, ovate and acute and the obovate, thickened li pis suffused with red at the base." Luer 1990
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Orquideologia Vol 12 No 2/3 1977/78 photo/drawing; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VII Systematics of Platystele Luer 1990 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003 photo good; A Compendium Of Miniature Orchid Species Vol 2 Parsons & Gerritsen 2013 photos fide; Orquideas de Farallones de Cali Galindo-Tarazona, Haelterman, Zuluaga Trochez and Sebastian Moreno 2020 photo fide
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