Pleurothallis parvula Ames & C.Schweinf. 1925 SUBGENUS Antilla Luer 2000
Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
EARLY
Common Name or Meaning The Small Pleurothallis [refers to the habit of the plant]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba at elevations around 1200 to 1850 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with a slender ramicauls enveloped below the middle by 3, tubular sheaths the uppermost longest and carrying a single, apical, erect in relation to the ramicaul, coriaceous, margins minutely crenulate, narrowly elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the sessile base leaf that blooms in the winter, spring and early summer on a distichous, arising through a spathe at the base of the leaf, sub-flexuous, , 1.2 to 2" [3 to 5 cm] long including the .6 to .8" [1.5 to 2 cm] long peduncle, loose, simultaneously few flowered inflorescence with an oblique, dilated, as long as to much longer than the ovary floral bract.
"Characerized by the small habit with narrowly elliptic leaves, more or less as long as the ramicaul and with minutely erose-undulate margins. A loose, subflexuous, few flowered raceme of purple flowers surpasses the leaf. The dorsal sepal and synsepal are fleshy and apiculate, the petals ae membraneous and narrowly acute and the proportionally smaller lip resembles the lip of Dryadella. The blade of the unguiculate lip is subquadrate, lobulate and undulate sometimes serrate. The long claw is bilobulate above the middle and narrowly attenuate tothe attachment with the base of the lip.
CAUTION!!! Said to be a synonym of P denticulata but I have left them separate for now.
Synonyms Antilla parvula (Ames & C.Schweinf.) Luer 2004
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Schedul. Orchid. 8: 30 Ames & C.Schweinf. 1925;
Catologo Descriptivo de Las Orquideas Cubanas Acuna 1987;
Orchidaceae Antillanae Nir 2000;
Phytotaxa 275: 270 Doucette 2016 as Acianthera parvula;
AOS Bulletin 87: 311 Kutz 2018 as Acianthera doucettei;
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