Pleurothallis bifalcis Schltr. 1918 SUBGENUS Uncifera
Photo by © Daniel Jimenez and his Flickr Orchid Website.
TYPE Drawing by Oakes Ames
Common Name The Two Lobed Pleurothallis [refers to the bifalcate lip]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Alajuela and Cartago provinces of Costa Rica without location as a small sized, densely caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped at the base by 2 to 3, thin tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, coriaceous, erect, narrowly obovate, subacute, narrowly cuneate below into the subpetiolate, conduplicate base leaf that blooms in the spring on an erect, arising at the apex of the ramicaul, slender, subdense, secund, 3.2 to 7.6" [8 to 19 cm] long, simultaneously several flowered, racemose inflorescence with oblique, as long as the pedicel floral bracts.
The largest of the section, readily recognized by the large habit and considerably larger flowers. The narrowly obovate leaves are distinctly longer than those of P segoviensis The loose, secund racemes are also longer with larger flowers, at least twice the dimensions of P segoviesis. The lip alone is about as large as the flowers of some variations of P segoviensis. The labellar lobes are narrowly oblong and antrorse." Luer 1998
Synonyms Stelis bifalcis (Schltr.) Pridgeon & M.W.Chase 2001; Unciferia bifalcis (Schltr.) Luer 2004
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Beih. Bot. Centralbl., Abt. 2 36(2): 395. Schltr. 1918;
Lindleyana Vol 16 No 4 2001 as Stelis bifalcis;
Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVI Pleurothallis subgenus Acianthera and Three Allied subgenera, A Second Century of new Species of Stelis of Ecuador, Epibator, Ophidion and Zootrophion Luer 2004 as Uncifera bifalcis;
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