Platystele examen-culicum Luer 1976 subgen Platystele Photo courtesy of Oliver Lenhard and his Orchideen Website

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Common Name The Mosquito Swarm Platystel [reference to the appearance of the many small flowers]

Flower Size 1/32" [3 mm]

Found in Colombia and Ecuador at elevations of 1500 to 2800 meters as a miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with erect to suberect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 ribbed, imbricating sheaths and carrying a single, apical, eret, coriaceous, narrowly elliptic-obovate, subbacute to obtuse leaf that is narrowly cuneate into the petiole and blooms in the spring on an erect to suberect, loose, distichous, flexuous, successively few to many flowered, racemose inflorescence arising laterally from the ramicaul and having oblique floral bracts. Synonyms Platystele culex Luer & R. Escobar 1981

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Systematics of Platystele Vol 7 1990; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003;

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