Microchilus ovatilabius (Ames & Correll) E.C.Smidt & M.W.Chase 2021
TYPE Drawing of Erythrodes ovatilabia by © Ames & Correll
Common Name The Ovate Lip Microchilus
Flower Size 1/2" [1.25 cm]
Found in Oaxaca state of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras in montane oak forests at elevations around 1200 to 2200 00 meters as a medium sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte or terrestrial with a prostrate rhizome giving rise to an erect-ascending, slender, pubescent with whitish, articulated hairs, leaf on the lower 1/4, stem carrying 5 to 8, dark green above with a whitish mid nerve, gray green beneath, obliquely elliptic to broadly elliptic, acute to subacuminate, rounded and tapering basally petiolate base leaves that blooms in the summer and fall on a terminal, erect, 2.8" [7 cm] long, rachis pubescent, cylindrical, densely many flowered inflorescence with ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, shorter to longer than the ovary floral bracts.
"Microchilus ovatilabius is one of the few species in the genus that have a simple lip. The closest relative is M secundus but it is a much smaller plat with small, ovate-subcordate leaves and a laxly few flowered, secund inflorescence. The essentially oval lip of M secundus has a thickened disc and a somewhat constricted crisped apex. The petals are spathulate instead of semirhombic in M ovatilabius." Ames & Correll 1942
Synonyms Erythrodes ovatilabia Ames & Correll 1942; Kreodanthus ovatilabius (Ames & Correll) Garay 1977
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
Bot. Mus. Leafl. 10: 70 Ames & Correll 1942 as Erythrodes ovatilabia
Bot. Mus. Leafl. 10: 99 Ames & Correll 1942 as Erythrodes ovatilabia drawing fide
Bradea 2: 199 Garay 1977 as Kreodanthus ovatilabius