Microchilus venustulus (Ames) E.C.Smidt & M.W.Chase 2021

Drawing by © Fritz Hamer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

TYPE Drawing of Erytrodes cornejoi

Drawing by © Calaway Dodson

Common Name The Small Pretty Microchilus

Flower Size .08" [2 mm]

Found in Cuba Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador in shady wet montane forests on steep slopes at elevations around 200 to 1000 meters as a miniature sized, one of the smallest of the genus, hot to warm growing epiphyte with an erect stem carrying several, pale green, ovate-elliptic, acute, gradually narrowing below into the clasping, petiolate base leaves that blooms in the fall and winter on an erect, terminal, 1.6 to 8" [4.5 to 20 cm] long, few to several flowered inflorescence with ovate, longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying white flowers

Often cited as a variety of M querceticolus but differs in the smaller weaker plant that grows on trees as an epiphyte, has large floral bracts and an apex of the lip that is not three lobed but at most apiculate.

Synonyms Aspidogyne venustula (Ames) Meneguzzo 2012; Erythrodes cornejoi Dodson 1997; Erythrodes querceticola var. venustula (Ames) Correll 1947; Erythrodes venustula (Ames) Ames 1915; *Physurus venustulus Ames 1908; Platythelys venustula (Ames) Garay 1977

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

Studies in the Family Orchidaceae Fascile 2: 261 Ames 1908 as Physurus venustulus

Studies in the Family Orchidaceae Vol 3: 39 Ames 1908 as Physurus venustulus

Studies in the Family Orchidaceae Vol 3: Pl 37 Ames 1908 as Physurus venustulus drawing fide;

Orchidaceae 5: 28 Ames 1915 as Erythrodes venustula

Lloydia 10: 210 Correll 1947 as Erythrodes querceticola var. venustula

Bradea 2: 198 Garay 1977 as Platythelys venustula

Icones Plantarum Tropicarum Plate 1082 Hamer 1982 drawing fide;

Orquideologia Vol 20 #2: 275 1997 as Erythrodes cornejoi drawing fide;

Manual De Plants De Costa Rica Vol III Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003 as Erythrodes venustula;

Orquidário 26: 91 Meneguzzo 2012 as Aspidogyne venustula

Materials to the Orchid Flora of Colombia Vol 1: 381 Szlachetko & Kolanowska 2017 as Platythelys venustula drawing fide

Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018

* Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 197: 345 E.C.Smidt & M.W.Chase 2021

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