Microchilus fosteri Ormerod 2008

TYPE Drawing by © Paul Ormerod and Harvard Pap. Bot. 13: 73 fig 23 Ormerod 2008

LATER

Common Name Foster’s Microchilus [American Botanist and Collector of the TYPE current]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Pasco department of Peru in wet forest on sides of a river terrace at elevations around 400 to 500 meters as a small to medium sized, hot growing terrestrial with a creeping, terete rhizome giving rise to an erect, terete stem carrying 3 to 6, ovate-elliptic to elliptic, subacuminate, medially with an indistinct paler, petiolate base leaves that blooms in the later fall on an erect, terminal, pubescent, 17.2" [43 cm] long peduncle pinkish, ca. 6.2" [15.5 cm] long; 3 to 4, lax, sheathing bracts, rachis 11" [27.5 cm] long, subdensely many-flowered inflorescence with lanceolate, acute, longer then the ovary flo- ral bracts and carrying externally pubescent, white flowers.

"This species is somewhat similar to its Peruvian congener M. atalayae but it is a more slender plant (stems .12" to .2" versus .2 to .52" [ 3 to 5 vs. 5 to 13 mm] thick) with flowers that have entire (not apicaily sublobate) petals, a sublobate (not entire) labellum hypochile, and a column with broader (not slender) column brachia." Ormerod 2008

"M fosteri resembles several other species such as Microchilus paleaceus, Microchilus caramantae and Microchilus aspidogynoides especially in the lip form, which is characterized by an obtuse obtruncate epichile devoid of a triangular-acute apiculus. On the contrary to M fosteri and M aspidogynoides the hypochile of M palaeceus and M caramantae are thickened in their basal part, M fosteri differs from M aspidogynoides in shorter floral bracts somewhat longer sepals and petals, a wider epichile and a longer spur.” Szlachetko & Kolanowska 2017

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Harvard Pap. Bot. 13: 74 Ormerod 2008

Harvard Pap. Bot. 13: 73 fig 23 Ormerod 2008 Drawing fide

Materials to the Orchid Flora of Colombia Vol 1: 321 Szlachetko & Kolanowska 2017 drawing fide;

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