Pleurothallis bicruris Lindl. 1859 SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Pleurothallis SUBSECTION Antenniferae Luer 1998
Plant and Inflorescence insitu Ecuador
Photo by © Andreas Kaye and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Photo by © Alexander Reynolds and UC Davis Orchid Website
Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The Two Legged Pleurothallis [refers to the forked lip]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Pichincha, Carchi and Imbabura provinces of northern Ecuador at elevations around 2800 to 3200 meters as a small to just medium sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with relatively slender, erect ramicauls with an inflated tubular sheath below the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying an erect, single, coriaceous, elliptical, obtuse, shortly acuminate, rounded into the sessile base leaf that blooms in the fall and winter on 1 to 3, arising through a spathe, loose, flexuous, dangling, 4 to 6.4" [10 to 16 cm] long, several flowered inflorescence with a tubular, as long as to shorter than the pedicel floral bract.
"Distinguished by the relatively slender ramicauls carrying a sessile, elliptical leaf carrying a loose, dangling raceme of comparitively large flowers which face upwards with the concave synsepal uppermost and the pointed dorsal sepal and the petals recurving. The trilobed lip has long lateral lobes extending out like a pair of tongs and the middle lobe is small and acutely deflexed beneath the thickened base of the lip." Luer 1999
Synonyms Humboltia bicruris (Lindl.) Kuntze 1891; Pleurothallis diploglossa Schltr. 1915
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol III Systematics of Pleurothallis Luer 1986;
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