Platystele sulcata Luer & Hirtz 1992

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

LATE EARLY

Common Name The Grooved Platystele [refers to the longitudianlly grooved lip]

Flower Size .4” [1 cm]

Found in Napo province of Ecuador at elevations around 1200 meters as mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with an erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by 2 to 3, thin, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute to subacute, narrowly cuneate below into the slender petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and fall on an erect, loose, flexuous, distichous, slender, 6” [4.5 cm] long including the .6” [1.5 cm] long peduncle, successively few flowered inflorescence arising laterally from the ramicaul with thin, shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.="

"Most similar to Platystele aculeata but differs in the ciliate-pubescent sepals and petals and an acuminate lip that is distinctly sulcate on the basal half. Between the sulcus and a prominent glenion , a small, orbicular callus is present. The labellar sulcus is reminiscent of the much larger Platystele orectoglossa ." Luer 1992

Synonyms

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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------