Pleurothallis ruscaria Luer 1980 SUBGENUS Ancipitia SECTION Ancipitia SUBSECTION Scopula in ed.
Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuador Orchid Website
Photo by Lourens Grobler
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The Broom Pleurothallis [refers to the tufted inflorescence]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Nariño department of Colombia and Carchi province of Ecuador in shady, wet tropical forests at elevations around 1600 to 1800 meters as a small sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 tubular sheaths and another below the middle and carrying an erect, thinly coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, narrowly cuncatc, long-decurrent base leaf that blooms in the summer on shortly-erect-arching, enclosed by a fugacious spathe, in a fascile of successive, single flowered inflorescence with somewhat shorer than the pedicel floral bracts and carrying small globose flowers held towards the apex of the leaf in a small tuft.
"Distinguished by the tufted inflorescence often farther from the apex of the leaf and the small, purple globose flowers. The dorsal sepal and synsepal are similar, ovate and concave, the petals are erose and acute and the lip is concave and apiculate." Luer 1989
Synonyms Colombiana ruscaria (Luer) Luer 2004
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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;
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 Colombiana ruscaria;
AOS Bulletin Vol 86 #2 2017 photo fide;
AOS Bulletin Vol 88 #4 2019 photo fide;
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