Pleurothallis praecipua Luer 1980 SUBGENUS Ancipitia SECTION Ancipitia Luer 1986
Photo by © S Manning and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Photo courtesy of Eric Hunt, plant grown by Hanging Gardens.
Photo courtesy of Walter Teague.
Photo by The Ecuagenera Orchid WEbsite
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name The Peculiar Pleurothallis
Flower Size .24" [6 mm]
Found in Napo amd Morona-Santiago provinces of Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations of 1650 to 1900 meters as a small sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect, sharply ancipitous above the middle, enveloped basally by 2 to 3 sheaths and another tubular sheath below the middle and carrying a rigid, coriaceous, erect, narrowly ovate, acute, carinate externally, somewhat conduplicate leaf with an obtusely cunate, sessile base that blooms in the summer on erect-arching, arising from a reclining spathe, 1.6" [3.4 cm] long, in a fascile of successively single, few flowered inflorescence with 1/2 to 1/3rd as long as the pedicel floral bracts.
"The three lobed lip immediately distinguishes it from others in the subgenus. The middle lobe is rounded, apiculat, thick, flat, minutely serrulate and separated from the broadly rounded, oblique lateal lobes by a deep sinus. Externally are a pair of short, thick horns. The column is long for the subgenus." Luer 1998
Synonyms Ancipitia praecipua (Luer) Luer 2004
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Phytologia 46: 370 Luer 1980;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol III Systematics of Pleurothallis Luer 1986;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VI Systematics of Pleurothallis subgen Ancipita, Scopula and Trisetella Luer 1989 drawing fide;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 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 Ancipitia praecipua;
Orchid Species of Peru Zelenko & Bermudez 2009 photo fide
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