Pleurothallis mammillata Luer 1976 SUBGENUS Dracontia Luer 1986
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Photo by © J & L Orchids and the J & L Orchid Website
Common Name The Nipple Pleurothallis [refers to the calli on the lip]
Flower Size .15" [3mm]
Found in Panama department of Panama at elevations around 650 to 1000 meters as a miniature sized, warm growing, shortly creeping to subcaespitose epiphyte with ascending, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and another at the base and carrying a single, apcial, erect, coriaceous, narrolwy elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a weak, arising through a spathe, arching, distichous, 3.2 to 4.4" [8 to 11 cm] long, congested, many [to 30] flowered, racemose inflorescence with shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.
"Related to P phalangifera but more similar to P pruinosa with which it has been confused in the past. The narrow, dark green leaves are rigid in contrast to the long long, slender, fragile raceme which extends beyond the end of the blade. The numerous, tiny, pale green flowers, arranged in a two sided raceme are widely gaping with a cucullate dorsal sepal and with the sides of the united lateal; sepals rolled in. The fleshy petals are thickened at the blunt apex. The lip is deflexed near the middle, rounded and broadest above the middle and obtuse and provided with a minute pair of nipple-like processes near the center." Luer 1976
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Selbyana 3(1–2): 138–140, f. 172. Luer 1976
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol III Systematics of Pleurothallis Luer 1986;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
