Pleurothallis purpurascens Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Acianthera [Scheidw.] Luer 1986

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

Common Name The Becoming Purplish Pleurothallis [refers to the leaf]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador at elevations around 1000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm 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, erect, to .4" [1 cm] long including the .04 to .2" [1 to 5 mm] long peduncle, few flowered inflorescence arising through a spathe at the leaf base.

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

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Lindleyana 11: 181 Luer & Hirtz 1996 Drawing fide;

Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003 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 purpurescens] drawing fide;

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