Pleurothallis simplex Ames & C.Schweinf. 1930 SUBGENUS Pseudostelis
Photo by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name The Simple Pleurothallis [Refers to the lip]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in San Jose and Cartago provinces of Costa Rica at elevations around 2700 to 3200 meters as a small sized, cold growing, shortly repent to caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath near the middle and 2 to 3, imbricating others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical-oblong, obtuse, rounded below into the sessile base leaf that blooms in the fall and winter on an erect, arising through a spathe at the base of the leaf, slender, subflexuous, distichous, 4 to 6.4" [1`0 to 16 cm] long, including the 1.6 to 2" [4 to 5 cm] long peduncle, densely many flowered inflorescence with a shorter to as long as the ovary floral bract and carrying several flowers open at any one time .
"Characterized by the elliptical, obtuse, sessile leaf bourne by a longer ramicaul and a twice longer slender, erect raceme. Several minute flowers are produced simultaneously in a successively flowered raceme. The sepals are fleshy, free and obtuse, the petals are oblong and obtuse amd the lip is suborbicular with a transverse callus across the base." Luer 1999
Synonyms Crocodeilanthe simplex (Ames & C.Schweinf.) Toscano 2018; Stelis simplex (Ames & C.Schweinf.) Pridgeon & M.W.Chase 2001
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Ames & C. Schweinf., Sched. Orch. 10: 37. 1930 holotype fide;
Lindleyana 16(4): 266. Pridgeon & M.W. Chase, 2001 as Stelis simplex;
Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003;
Harvard Pap. Bot. 23: 54 Toscano 2018 as Crocodeilanthe simplex
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