Scaphosepalum microdactylum Rolfe 1893 SECTION Distichium Luer 1988
Photo by © Lourens Grobler
Photo by © Eric Hunt, plant grown by Dan Newman of Hanging Gardens.
Photo by © Prem Subrahmanyam.
Drawing by © Carl Luer
to 
THROUGH EARLY 
Common Name The Little Fingered Scaphosepalum [refers to it's smaller middle sepal]
Flower Size 1/5" [5 mm]
Found in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador in montane cloud forests at elevations of [sea level] 1000 to 2600 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cold growing epiphyte or terrestrial that is variable in plant form and flower, with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3, tubular sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptic, acute leaf that gradually narrows to the long, slender petiole that blooms in the spring through early fall on a congested, distichous, 3" [7.5 cm] long , successively many flowered racemose inflorescence arising from low on the ramicaul with oblong, oblique, acute, conduplicate floral bracts and holds the single flower at, below or just above leaf height.
"A variable species, but all species have in common a thickened distal half of the middle sepal, the "little finger", about as long as the synsepal. The development of the cusshion varies from distinct and triangular to merely a scarcely discernable thickening. The broad, prominent, though small distichous floral bracts that place this species in SECTION Distichium are so small in some clones that integration with section Leiocaulium is suggested." Luer 1988
Synonyms Scaphosepalum elasmatopus Schltr. 1913; Scaphosepalum longirepens Ames 1921; Scaphosepalum pittieri Schltr. 1906; Scaphosepalum standleyi Ames 1925
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR; * Bull. Misc. Inform. Kew, 1893(82-83): 335. 1893 Rolfe 1894 ; Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 12(317-321): 204. Schlechter 1913 as S elasmotopus; Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash. 34: 153. 1921. as S longirepens; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol V Systematics of Dresslerella and Scaphosepalum Luer 1988 drawing fide; Orchids Travel By Air A Pictoral Safari Mulder, Mulder-Roelfsema and Schuiteman 1990 photo fide; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1582 Atwood 1993 drawing ok; Native Colombian Orchids Vol 4 COS 1992 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 64 No 3 1995 photo fide; Guatemala Y Sus Orquideas Behar & Tinschert 1998 photo fide; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 drawing fide; Orquideas de la Serrania del Baudo Misas Urreta 2006 drawing/photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 77 No 11 2008; Mille et Une Mini Orchideees Roguenant 2009 photo fide; Guia de Orquideas de Chiapas Carlos Rommel Beutelspacher Baigts 2013 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 85 #2 2016 photo ok; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018 photo fide; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018 as S standleyi
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
