Pleurothallis longipetala Bogarin & Belfort 2021 SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Macrophyllae-Fasciculatae Lindl 1859

Photo by Franco Pupulin and Harvard Papers in Botany Vol. 26, No. 1 2021, The Researchgate Website

Common Name The Long Petal Pleurothallis

Flower Size .6" [1.5 cm]

Found in San Jose province of Costa Rica in the Pacific and Caribbean watershed foothills of the northcentral Cordillera de Talamanca in premontane rain forest at elevations around 1400 to 2800 meters as a small sized, cool to cold growing, caespitose epiphtye with erect to suberect, terete, slender, pale green ramicauls enveloped by 1, covering the basal third, closely adpressed, tubular, obtuse, glumaceous, pale green becoming papyraceous, brown sheaths and carrying a single, apical, horizontal to subhorizontal soft coriaceous, narrowly ovate-lanceolate, sessile below into the deeply cordate leaf that blooms in the fall and winter on a .6 to .64" [1.5 to 1.6 cm] long, arising through a suberect, brown, papery spathe, successively single flowered inflorescence.

" The flat flower, with the sepals not swept back at maturity, the long petals, and the erect lip provided with a transversely rectangular glenion are diagnostic of P. longipetala. Pleurothallis longipetala is similar to P. luna-crescens, P. radula, and P. rectipetala, but it is distinguished from those species by the margins of the sepals not swept back at maturity, the erect lip (instead of reclinate over the synsepal), the distinctly longer petals, and the transversely rectangular glenion of the lip, which is unique to it. The purple or dull-purplish-yellow flowers boldly striped with purple easily separates it from P. radula, whose flowers are concolorous yellow, while the almost flat flower (except for the erect lip) distinguishes it at first glance from the crescent moon-shaped flowers of P. luna-cescens. The long petals, almost equal in length to the sepals, cannot be mistaken for those of P. rectipetala, which are distinctly shorter than the sepals." Pupulin etal 2021

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Harvard Papers in Botany Vol. 26, No. 1 2021, The Researchgate Website photo/drawing fide;

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