Pleurothallis knappiae Luer 2000 SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Pleurothallis SUBSECTION Acroniae SERIES Amphygiae Luer 1998
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name Knapp's Pleurothallis [American Collector of species current]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Veraguas province of Panama at elevations around 1200 to 1500 meters as a mini-miniature to miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect to suberect ramicauls with a thin tubular sheath below the middle and 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute, acuminate, cuneate below into the sessile base leaf that blooms in the winter and spring on 1 to 3, arising through a spathe at the base of the leaf, delicate, distichous, 3.2 to 4.8" [8 to 12 cm] long including the 1.2" [3 cm] long peduncle, loosely, simultaneously several to many flowered inflorescence with infundibular, shorter than the ovary floral bracts.
"It is most closely related to the Ecuadorian P. tryssa Luer, but it differs from the latter by a much larger habit, but with small, translucent white, delicate flowers about the same size. The leaves are erect, acuminate, and cuneate at the sessile base. One to three, usually many-flowered racemes surpass the leaf. The dorsal sepal and synsepal are narrowly obtuse while the petals are long and subulate. The lip is three-lobed with the midlobe sharply acute, and the lateral lobes obliquely erect below the middle." Luer 2000
Synonyms Acronia knappiae (Luer) Luer 2005
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVII Dryadella SECTION Macrophyllae-Fasciculatae Luer 2005 as Acronia knappiae
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