Pleurothallis vargasii C.Schweinf. 1942 SUBGENUS Crocodeilanthe [Rchb.f & Warsc.]Luer 1986
photo by © Rebecca Repasky and The Atrium Website
Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
LATE 
EARLY
Common Name Vargas' Pleurothallis [Peruvian Collector of species 1900's]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Apurimac department of Peru and La Paz department of Bolivia in cloud forests at elevations around 3500 to 3700 meters as a small to medium sized, cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with stout, erect ramicauls with a loose tubular sheaths near the middle and 2 to 3, loose, imbricating sheaths at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, obtuse, broadly cuneate below into the sessile-subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the late fall and early winter on a few to several, simultaneous, more or less secund, arising through a conspicuous spathe from an annulus just below the abscission layer, 4 to 7.6" [10 to 19 cm] long including the .8 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with a rose suffused, shorter than the ovary floral bract.
"Several simultaneously flowered racemes about as long as the leaf are produced from a conspicuous, foliaceous spathe. The color of the flowers was not stated with any of the collections. The sepals, petals and obscurely three lobed lip with rounded intramural calli on the lateral lobes are basically similar to P floribunda and P velaticaulis and their relatives." Luer 1998
Synonyms Crocodeilanthe vargasii (C.Schweinf.) Luer 2004; Stelis vargasii (C.Schweinf.) Pridgeon & M.W.Chase 2001
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Bot. Mus. Leafl. 10: 192 Schweinfurth 1942;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVI Systematics of Pleurothallis SUBGEN Crocodeilanthe, Rhynchopera and Talpinaria Luer 1998 drawing fide;
Orchids of Bolivia Vasquez & Ibisch Vol 1 2000 drawing fide;
Lindleyana 16: 4:267 Pridgeon & M.W.Chase 2001 as Stelis vargasii;
Macchu Picchu Orchids Eric Christenson 2003;
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 Crocodielanthe vargasii
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