Microchilus tridax (Rchb.f.) Ormerod 2002
Photos by © O Vargas and The Pl@ntnet Website
Drawing by © Stig Dalstrom and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
LATE 
EARLY
Common Name The Three? Microchilus
Flower Size .08" [2 mm]
Found in Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Costa Rica in tropical wet forests at elevations of 50 to 1900 meters as a small to just medium sized, hot to cool growing terrestrial with a creeping then ascending rhizome giving rise to an erect stem enveloped completely by leaf sheaths carrying 3 to 7, in a rosette, dark green above, purple to light green and 3 veined beneath, convolute, elliptic-ovate, acute, slightly acuminate gradually narrowing below into the petiolate base leaves that blooms in the late spring and early summer on an erect, puberulent, terminal, to 8.8 to 10.8" [24 to 27 cm] long overall, rachis to 6" [15 cm] long, successively laxly many flowered inflorescence with 3 to 4 somewhat flared, tubular bracts.
Synonyms Erythrodes purpurea (Ames) Ames 1915; Erythrodes tridax (Rchb.f.) Ames 1922; Physurus purpureus Ames 1908; *Physurus tridax Rchb.f. 1866
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI Studies in the Family Orchidaceae Fascile 2 Ames 1908 as Physurus purpureus; Studies in the Family Orchidaceae Vol 3 Ames 1908 drawing fide; Studies in the family Orchidaceae Vol VII Ames 1922 as Erythrodes tridax; Icones Plantarum Tropicarum Plate 1329 Atwood 1989 as Erythrodes purpureum drawing fide; Manual De Plants De Costa Rica Vol III Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003 as Erythrodes tridax; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018; Vanishing Beauty, Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 2 Lacaena to Pteroglossa Pupulin 2020 photo fide
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