Echinosepala shuarii (Luer) Luer 2007
Photo by Linda & Mikael Karlbom
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE 
Common Name or Meaning The Shuar Pleurothallis [An Indigenous People of the area]
Flower Size .4" [1 mm]
Found in Morona-Santiago and Zamora-Chinchipe provinces of southeastern Ecuador in shady, wet tropical montane forests at elevations around 900 to 1400 meters as a miniature sized, warm to cool growing, shortly repent to caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped basally by 3 to 4 loose, imbricating, tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thickly coriaceous, rigid, dark green, subacute to obtuse, cuneate below into the subsessile base leaf that blooms in the late spring and summer on a short, enclosed by a spathe at the base of the leaf, successively single flowered inflorescence with shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.
"It differs in several ways from the other species in the subgenus {Kraenzlinella for that reason I moved it to the geunus Echinosepala}. The inflorescence is reduced to a single flower; the petals are narrowly triangular without basal auricles; and the three-lobed lip is without a decurved, auriculate claw. However, the features that indicate the position of this species in Kraenzlinella are: the habit with a thickly coriaceous leaf borne by a shorter, stout ramicaul; free, fleshy, carinate sepals; Ovaries with transverse, spiculate appendages; an oblong, fleshy, verrucose lip; and an elongate column shallowly hooded at the apex." Luer 1994
Synonyms Kraenzlinella shuarii (Luer) Luer 2004; Pleurothallis shuarii Luer 1982; Pupulinia shuarii [Luer] Karremans & Bogarin 2020;
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol III Syatematics of Pleurothallis Luer 1986;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XI Systematics of Lepanthes Subgenus Brachycladium and Pleurothallis Subgenus Aenigma, Subgenus Elongata and Subgenus Kranzlinella Luer 1994 as Pleurothallis shuarii 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 Kraenzlinella schaurii;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX a Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Systematics of Apoda-Prorepentia Luer 2007 as Echinosepala shuarii;
Phytotaxa 275: 271 Doucette 2016 as Acianthera erinacea;
AOS Bulletin Vol 88 #9 2019 photo fide;
Pleurothallids Neotropical Jewels Vol 1 Karremans & Viera 2020 as Pupulinia shuarii photo/drawing fide;
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