Pleurothallis prostrata Lindl. 1858 SUBGENUS Antilla Luer 2000
Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATER
EARLY
Common Name The Prostrate Pleurothallis [A misnomer as the ramicauls are erect]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in eastern Cuba in humid and shady places in gallery forests and montane rainforests from 400 to 1585 meters as a mini-miniature sized, hot to cool growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, not prostrate, elongate, straight ramicauls enveloped completely by 3, conduplicate sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptic, acute, tridentate, acute to cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms later spring and earlier summer on 1 to 3, arising through a conduplicate, acute sheath terminal, pendent, .8" to 2.8" [2 to 7 cm] long, flexuous, successively 1 to 5 flowered inflorescence with conspicuous, inflated longer than the ovary florall bracts.
"Because of the way the original plant was mounted after collecting Lindley thought that the ramicauls were prostrate, not so, they are erect. The pedicels are short and completly enveloped by the inflated floral bract. The slender, flexuous, segments of the rachis give the false impression of being pedicels. The zigzag raceme and relatively large, gaping flower are reminiscent of P appendiculata. The thick lip suggests the Subgenus Acianthera with marginal lobes below the middle and a central pair of calli." Luer 2000
Synonyms Antilla prostrata (Lindl.) Luer 2004; Humboltia prostrata (Lindl.) Kuntze 1891
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 3, 1: 327 Lindley 1858;
Revis. Gen. Pl. 2: 668 Kuntze 1891 as Humboltia prostrata;
Catologo Descriptivo de Las Orquideas Cubanas Acuna 1987;
Orchidaceae Antillanae Nir 2000;
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 Antilla prostrata;
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