Pleurothallis macilenta [Luer & Hirtz] in ed. SUBGENUS Acianthera [Scheidw.] Luer 1986

TYPE Drawing of Acianthera macilenta by © Carl Luer

LATE EARLY

Common Name The Lean Pleurothallis [refers to the slender habit with narrow acute leaves]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm] wide

Found in Sucumbios province of Ecuador at elevations around 1900 meters as a medium sized, cool growing, repent epiphyte with slender, erect, terete ramicauls enveloped by a below the middle tubular sheath and another at the base and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, elliptical-ovate, acute, cuneate below into the sessile base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, arising from the base of the leaf through a fugaceous spathe, peduncle .8" [2 cm] long, rachis 1.2" [3 cm] long, loose, successively single, 4 to 5 flowered inflorescence with as long as the pedicel floral bracts and carrying flowers with red purple with darker veins, glabrous, fleshy sepals, white with a purple midvein petals and a dark purple, glabrous lip.

"A creeping habit with long, slender ramicauls; and a narrow leaf with a short, erect inflorescence of usually four distant flowers is an unusual combination of features in the section Acianthera but the red-purple floral parts of the bilabiate flowers are not unusual. In P macilenta, the sepals are glabrous, the dorsal sepal being narrowly oblong; the small, obovate petals are minutely denticulate; and two minute, acute marginal angles are present above the base of the lip." Luer 2013

Synonyms *Acianthera macilenta Luer & Hirtz 2013

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

Harvard Papers in Botany, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 173 to 196 MISCELLANEOUS NEW SPECIES IN THE PLEUROTHALLIDINAE (ORCHIDACEAE) Carlyle A. Luer & Lisa Thoerle 2013 as Acianthera macilenta drawing fide

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