Pleurothallis navisepala Pupulin, J.Aguilar & M.Díaz 2017 SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Macrophyllae-Fasciculatae Lindl 1859
Photo Franco Pupulin /TYPE Drawing by Darba Solano
Comparison photo of flowers between P navisepala and P cardiothallis
Photo/by Franco Pupulin
Common Name The Boat-Like Sepals Pleurothallis [refers to the boat shaped synsepal]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Alajuela province of Costa Rica on the Caribbean watershed of the Cordillera de Tilarán and the Cordillera de Guanacaste in wet premontane and lower montane forest, at mid-elevations of 700 to 1200 meters as a small sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with terete, slender, 6 to 9.2" [15 to 23 cm] long, yellowish green ramicauls provided with two tubular, short, obtuse sheaths one at the base, and a longer, tubular, tightly adpressed, subobtuse to truncate sheath below the middle, and carrying a single, apical, borne horizontally at the apex of the ramicaul, becoming curved-subpendent with age, thinly coriaceous, flexible, ovate, narrowly acute to acuminate, deeply cordate at the base, matte grass green, sessile base leaf that blooms in the fall and winter on 1 to 4, a solitary flower, usually produced singly, rarely in pairs, from a reclined brown, dry-papyraceous when mature, eventually dissolving with age spathaceous bract. .
"Whilst large plants of P. navisepala are indistinguishable in habit from medium sized specimens of P. cardiothallis, the flowers easily allow distinction between the two species. In P. cardiothallis the flowers are produced singly, very rarely in pairs; they are large flowers for the genus, with the margins of the sepals and the petals reflexed at maturity. On the contrary, P. navisepala frequently produces two to four inflorescences at once, bearing comparatively small flowers that do not spread out completely, provided with a deeply concave-navicular synsepal and porrect petals. The size of the peltate lip is very similar between the two species, so that the ratio lip:synsepal is notably greater in P. navisepala, the lip occupying most of the concave space formed by the synsepal. The synsepal is not ovate, but transversely elliptic-ovate. For this reason we prefer giving formal recognition to this taxon as distinct from P. cardiothallis , which has ovate sepals and a lip about half the length of the sepals." Pupulin 2017
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
*LANKESTERIANA 17(2): 344 Pupulin 2017 photo/drawing fide;
Harvard Papers in Botany Vol. 26, No. 1 2021, The Researchgate Website photo/drawing fide;
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