Pleurothallis nanella Luer & Hirtz 2003 SUBGENUS Acianthera SECTION Brachystachyae

TYPE Drawing by © Luer & Hirtz and The Epidendra Orchid Website

Common Name The Tiny Pleurothallis

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador at elevations around 1000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with slender, erect to suberect ramicauls with a close tubular sheath below the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, erect, thickly coriaceous, elliptical, acute, narrowly cuneate below into the sessile base leaf that blooms in the summer on a congested, arising through a spathe at the leaf base, erect, to .4" [1 cm] long including the .04 to .2" [1 to 5 mm] long peduncle, few flowered inflorescence with longer to as long as the pedicel floral bracts and carrying flowers with olive greens sepals with purple stripes, transluscent petals, and a light olive lip.

Luer combined this species, P barthelemy and P purpurescens into P erebatensis, I have split them apart as the plants and flowers really are quite different.

"Allied to P kegelii but distinguished by the very short, congested, few flowered rraceme, a synsepal witha prominent mentum below the column foot and an obovate lip." Luer 2004

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Orquideología Vol 22 #3 pg 267-269, 285. 2003 Luer & Hirtz drawing 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 P erebatensis [P nanella]drawing fide;

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