Pleurothallis valvola Luer & Hirtz 1988 SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Pleurothallis SUBSECTION Pleurothallis SERIES Pleurothalls Luer 1986

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

EARLY

Common Name The Shell Pleurothallis [refers to the appearance of the flower]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Morona-Santiago province Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1000 to 1500 meters as a mini-miniature to miniature sized, warm to cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls with close tubular sheaths above the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on a dense, arising through and concealed by a oblique, foliaceous spathe laterally from the ramicaul, a fascile of single flowered inflorescence below the abscission layer and has a rose suffused, much shorter than the pedicel floral bract.

"Characterized by the shortly petiolate, narrowl\y ovate leaves borne by slebder ramicauls of about the same length.The inflorescence is a fascile of solitary flowers produced laterally from the ramicaul from the spathe a short distance below the abscision layer. The dorsal sepal and the synsepal are obtuse and concave, the petals are linear and the lip is three lobed with rounded basal lobes to either side of the essentially footless column." Luer 1998

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Lindleyana 3: 149 Luer & Hirtz 1988; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVII Systematics of Pleurothallis Section Abortivae, Truncatae, Subsection Acroniae, Subgenera Dracontia and Uncifera Luer 1998 Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVII Systematics of Pleurothallis Section Abortivae, Truncatae, Subsection Acroniae, Subgenera Dracontia and Uncifera Luer 1998 drawing fide;

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