Microchilus alajuelae (Ormerod) E.C.Smidt & M.W.Chase 2021

TYPE Drawing by © Ormerod and Harvard Pap. Bot. 11: 175: fig 35 Ormerod 2007

Full shade Warm LATE Fall

Common Name The Alajuela Microchilus [A province of Costa Rica]

Flower Size .08" [2 mm]

Found in Alajuela province of Costa Rica at elevations around 750 meters as a small sized, warm growqing epiphyte, lithophyte or terrestrial with a creeping rhizome giving rise to an erect, terete stem carrying laxly 6, obliquely lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, acute, dark velvety green to green with lighter medial variegation, petiolate base leaves that blooms in the fall on an erect, terminal, 1.5 to 2.08" [3.75 to 5.02 cm] long overall, peduncle .76 to .88" [1.9 to 2.2 cm] long, provided with 4 to 5, lanceolate, acute, sheathing bracts, rachis .422 to .126" [1.55 to 3.15 cm] long, subdensely to sublaxly flowered inflorescence with ovate-triangu- lar, acute, just shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying glabrous, white with a bright yellow spur.

"This species is easily distinguished from M. querceticola by its flowers which have the lateral lobules of the labellum epichile infolded and connate to its upper sur- face. In M. querceticola the labellum has a spreading epichile in which the sides are slightly recurved." Ormerod 2007

Synonyms Aspidogyne alajuelae (Ormerod) Meneguzzo 2012; Platythelys alajuelae Ormerod 2007;

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

Harvard Pap. Bot. 11: 174 Ormerod 2007 as Platythelys alajuelae

Harvard Pap. Bot. 11: 175: fig 35 Ormerod 2007 as Platythelys alajuelae Drawing fide

Orquidário 26: 89 Meneguzzo 2012 as Aspidogyne alajuelae

* Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 197: 337 E.C.Smidt & M.W.Chase 2021

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