Platystele portillae Luer 2002
Photos courtesy of Lourens Grobler ©
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning Portilla's Platystelle [Ecuadorian collector of species current]
Flower Size .2" [5mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1800 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by a close, thin, tubular sheath and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly obovate, obtuse, gradually narrowing below into the cuneate, indistinct petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on an erect, arising from a node below the abcission layer loose, flexuous, 2" [5 cm] long including the .8" [2 cm] long peduncle, successively few flowered, racemose inflorescence with much shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.
"Characterized by a hair-like, flexuous raceme that bears tiny flowers auccesssively, surpassing the little narrowly obovate leaf. The sepals are obtuse and ciliate with the laterals reflexed. The petals are narrower and incurved and the ovate lip, as large as the sepals, protrudes." Luer 2002
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV A first Centrury of new species of Stelis Ecuador Luer 2002 Drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003 photo fide;
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