Pleurothallis bucaramangae Luer & R.Escobar 1996 SUBGENUS Crocodeilanthe [Rchb.f & Warsc.]Luer 1986
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Website
Common Name The Bucaramanga Pleurothallis [A city in northeastern Colombia]
Flower Size .2" [5mm]
Found in Santander department of Colombia on the eastern slope of the eastern Cordillera of the Andes in scrub forests at elevations around 3300 meters as a small sized, cold growing, densely cespitose epiphyte or terrestrial on road banks with fasciculate, relatively slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by a slender tubular sheath near the middle and 2 to 3 imbricating, sheaths at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coricaceous, elliptical, subacute to obtuse, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on 1 to 2, stout, erect, 3.2 to 4.4" [8 to 11 cm] long, including the .4 to .8" [1 to 2 cm] long peduncle, arising through a slender spathe from an annulus at the base of the leaf, densely and simultaneously many flowered racemose inflorescence with a tubular, enveloping the pedicel floral bract.
"The flowers are very similar to P salpingantha the habit immediately distinguishes the new species. It is a slender plant with distinctly petiolate leaves and a small, slender spathe obly about .4" [1 cm] long, The inflorescence emerges about .8" [2 cm] below the leaf blade. P salpingantha on the other hand has stout ramicauls with large, sessile leaves and a large braod, foliaceous spathe. The seplas of both species are connate to neatr the middle into a sepaline tube. The 3 veined petals and oblong, bicallous lip are also similar." Luer 1998
Synonyms Crocodeilanthe bucaramangae (Luer & R.Escobar) Luer 2004; Stelis bucaramangae (Luer & R.Escobar) Pridgeon & M.W.Chase 2001
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Orquideología 20: 38. Luer 1996 drawing fide;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVI Systemics of Pleurothallis SUBGEN Crocodeilanthe, Rhynchopera and Talpinaria Luer 1998 drawing fide;
Lindleyana Vol 16 No 4:261 P{ridgeon & Chase 2001 as Stelis bucaramangae
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 Crocodeilanthe bucaramangae;
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