Platystele catiensis Karremans & Bogarín 2014
Photo/TYPE Drawing by © Karremans
Common Name The CATIE Platystele [Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion Ensenanza where this species was first observed by the authors. CATIE is, like Lankester Botanical Garden, celebrating its 40th Anniversary in 2013]
Flower Size .16" [4 mm]
Found in Cartago province of Costa Rica in wet premontane forests at elevations of 300 to 600 meters as a mini-miniature sized, hot to warm growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect slender ramicauls enveloped by tubular, imbricating, slightly compressed, brownish and papery with age, membraneous sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, elliptic, conduplicate, subacute, emarginate, abaxially keeled, shortly apiculate, , narrowing below into the conduplicate, petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter, spring and summer on a racemose, distichous, peduncle .24 to .32" [6 to 8 mm] long, .48 to .52" [1.2 to 1.3 cm] long ovarall, successively single, several flowered inflorescence with acute, conduplicate, shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.
"Platystele catiensis has been confused in Costa Rica with the apparently widely distributed and variable P. oxyglossa. The latter is also found in the country (Luer 1990), but P. catiensis is typically found growing below elevations of 650 meters in the Caribbean lowlands (vs. growing at an elevation of 1000-2500 meters in the Central and Talamanca Cordillera), it has a much smaller plant that grows up to .8" [2 cm] including the inflorescence (vs. 2.4" [6 cm] tall), a denser and shorter inflorescence which is up to .52" [1.3 cm] long (vs. a stingy inflorescence up to 2" [5 cm] long), with .4 to .8" [1.0 to 2.0 mm] long pedicels (pedicels .1 to .28" [2.5-7.0 mm] long), with less than .2" [5 mm] between each one (distance between pedicels .08 to .2" [2.0 to 5.0 mm] long), and smaller flowers with sepals and petals up to .092" [2.3 mm] long (vs. up to .14" [3.5 mm] long), and the lip up to about .06" [1.5 mm] long (vs. .1" [2.5 mm] long). From the Guatemalan type material of P. oxyglossa, P. catiensis can be distinguished by the shorter .088 to .092" [2.2 to 2.3 mm], shortly acuminate and marginally glandular sepals (vs. sepals .1" [2.5 mm], long acuminate, glabrous), the petals and lip are longer, subequal to the sepals, the petal margin is glandular, while the lip is elliptic, and completely glandular-hirsute, especially near the apex (vs. sepals and lip .06" [1.5 mm], much shorter than the sepals, and are glabrous, the lip is ovate-lanceolate). It might well turn out that none of the Costa Rican material can be referred to P. oxyglossa. In that case the larger species found in the Central Cordillera should be referred to as Platystele schulzeana (Schltr.) Garay, described from La Carpintera. For the time being we only segregate the easily distinguished and morphologically constant P. catiensis, and point out that the name P. oxyglossa has been applied to two different species in Costa Rica. A few Brazilian species have been placed under synonymy of P. oxyglossa, but from what we have seen they are most likely not the same species, and certainly are not the same as those found in Costa Rica. The recently described Platystele paraensis Campacci & da Silva has the typical general flower morphology of the P. oxyglossa complex, and is as tiny as P. catiensis. It can be distinguished by the single flowered inflorescence, the sepals that are long caudate, that have an orange mid-vein and are much longer than the lip, which is apically yellow-orange. Flower morphology and size is similar to Platystele psix Luer & Hirtz, however the Ecuadorian species has cellular-pubescent sepals and petals. Another similar species occurs in Panama and Ecuador, Platystele taylorii Luer can be however recognized by the lip that is long acuminate and exceeds the glabrous sepals." Karremans & Bogarin 2014
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lankesteriana 12[3]: 265 Karremans and Bogarin 2014 photo/drawing fide;
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