Pleurothallis meridana Rchb.f. 1850 SUBGENUS Acuminatia SECTION Acuminatae Luer 1986
Photo by © Linda & Mikael Karlbom, Sweden
Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name The Merida Pleurothallis [A Town In Venezuela]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Colombia and northwestern Venezuela in rain and cloud forests at elevations around 2000 meters as a miniature sized, cool to cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, terete ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3 tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, dusty grey green, very thick and hard fleshy, almost succulent, lightly concave to convex leaf that blooms in the winter on an erect, subtended by a narrow spathe arsing from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, 2" [5 cm] long, several to many flowered inflorescence with as long to longer than the pedicel floral bract.that is as tall or a little shorter than the leaf.
"Characterized by the narrowly elliptical leaf surpassed by a several flowered raceme with non-,shorter and proportionally broader sepals, the petals are obovate with a rounded, concave apex. AS in P acuminata the lip is similarly arcuate but the carinae merge into the erect margin below the middle." Luer 1999
Synonyms Anathallis meridana (Rchb.f.) Pridgeon & M.W.Chase 2001; Humboltia meridana (Rchb.f.) Kuntze 1891; Specklinia meridana (Rchb.f.) Luer 2004; Stelis meridana (Rchb.f.) Karremans 2014
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
*Linnaea 22: 826 Rchb.f 1850;
Revis. Gen. Pl. 2: 668 Kuntze 1891 as Humboltia medidana;
Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 4 Dunsterville and Garay 1966 drawing fide;
Flora de Venezuela Volumen 15 Parte 2 Foldats 1970 drawing fide;
Orchids of Venezuela, An Illustrated Field Guide Vol 3 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 drawing fide;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol III Systematics of Pleurothallis Luer 1986;
Orchids of Venezuela [An illustrated field guide] Vol. 3 Ramiro and Carnevali 2000 drawing fide;
Lindleyana Vol 16 No 4:249 Pridgeon and Chase 2001 as Anathallis meridana;
Orquideas Nativas de Tachira' Cesar Fernandez 2003 photo fide;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVI Pleurothallis subgenus Acianthera and Three Allied subgenera, A Second Century of new Species of Stelis of Ecuador, Epibator, Ophidion and Zootrophion Luer 2004 as Specklinia meridana;
Lankesteriana 13: 329 Karremans 2014 as Stelis meridana
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