Platystele dalstroemii Luer 1992

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Website

LATER

Common Name Dalstroem's Platystele [Swedish Orchid Enthusiast, Illustrator and discoverer of species current]

Flower Size .32" [8 mm]

Found in Carchi province of Ecuador in wet forests at elevations around 2500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3, thin, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute to obtuse, narrowly cuneate below into the slender petiolate base leaf that blooms in the in the summer on an erect, subdense, slender, .72 to .92" [1.8 to 2.8 cm] long including the .4 to .8" [1 to 2 cm] long peduncle, successively 2 to 3 flowered inflorescence arising laterally from the ramicaul and has thin floral bracts.

"Distinguished by the very small habit, narrowly elliptical, petiolate leaves and a peduncle about as long that bears a succession of a few, comparitively large, fleshy flowers. Most distinctive are the thick, terete tails of the sepals that are about as long as the blade. The sepals and petals are microscopically pubescent and the obtuse, ovoid lip is cellular-glandular." Luer 1992

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol IX Systematics of Myoxanthus Luer 1992 drawing fide; ; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003 drawing fide

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