Pleurothallis furcifera Luer 1976 SUBGENUS Ancipitia SECTION Ancipitia Luer 1986
Photo by © Wiel Driessen and Facebook Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name The Fork Bearing Pleurothallis [refers to the bifid lip]
Flower Size .08" [2 mm]
Found in Huanaco department of Peru at elevations around 1450 meters as a mini-miniature to miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect, laterally compressed above the middle ramicauls with a tubular sheath above the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, rigid, coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acute, cuneate below into the sessile base leaf that blooms in the fall on horisontal to ascending, arising through and concealed mostly by a reclining spathe, above the base of the leaf, in a fascile of filiform, successively single, few flowered inflorescence with much shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.
"This unique species is characterized by a small, fleshy, narrowly ovate leaf borne by a longer but very thin, wire-like stem. From the base of the leaf a fascicle of pin-head-sized, long-pedicellate, purplish-green flowers emerges. The dorsal sepal and the united lateral sepals (the synsepal) appear as a pair of opposing cup-shaped valves. Within, the forked lip is flanked by the petals which are expanded above their middle like blunt arrow-heads. Below the middle the microscopic lip is deeply concave, and above the middle it is bifurcated into a pair of blunt, diverging lobes." Luer 1976
Synonyms Ancipitia furcifera (Luer) Luer 2004
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Selbyana 3: 108 Luer 1976 Drawing fide;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol III Systematics of Pleurothallis Luer 1986;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VI Systematics of Pleurothallis subgen Ancipita, Scopula and Trisetella Luer 1989 drawing fide;
Icones Orchidacearum Peruviarum Plate 158 Bennett & Christenson 1993 drawing fide;
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 Ancipitia furcifera
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