Pleurothallis megalotis Luer & Hirtz 1988 SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Pleurothallis SUBSECTION Macrophyllae-Racemosae [Lindl] Luer 1986
Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuador Orchid Website
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The Big-Eared Pleurothallis [refers to the rounded basal lobes of the lip]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Napo province of Ecuador in wet montane forests at elevations around 1850 to 1950 meters as a medium sized, cool growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by close, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, lightly acuminate, the base cuneate into the slender petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on a fascile, confined within the spathe of single, successive flowered, [2 to 3mm] long, inflorescence with an as long as to shorter than the pedicel floral bract.
Similar to P archidonae and P pelex, all three species being found in Napo province on the eastern side of the Andes, but P megalotis is distinguished by the fascile of short-pedunculate, solitary flowers with a deeply incised, three lobed lip with a deeply concave middle lobe and large orbicular, basal lobes that flank the column.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Lindleyana 3: 146 Luer & Hirtz 1988 drawing fide;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003 photo fide;
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