Pleurothallis pudica Pupulin, J.Aguilar & M.Díaz 2017 SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Macrophyllae-Fasciclatae Lindl. 1859
Photo/Drawing by © Franco Pupulin
LATER
Common Name The Shame Faced Pleurothallis [refers to how the flower is held in natural position, upside down and backwards with the column almost touching the leaf]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in San Jose province of Costa Rica on the Pacific slopes of the Talamanca mountain chain in central Costa Rica in premontane rain forests in paramo along roadcuts at elevations around 1700 meters as a small sized, cool growing, caespitose terrestrial with erect, terete, slender, pale green ramicauls enveloped basally by 2, differnt sized, lowermost loose, upper tightly clasping, tubular, obtuse sheaths and carrying a single, apical, reclinate toward the stem, thinly coriaceous, matte green, flexible, sessile, ovate, acute, shortly subacuminate, deeply cordate at the base, basal lobes sometimes overlapping leaf that blooms in the later spring on a horizontal, through an erect, green, becoming brown with age, glumaceous, dry papery when mature, rectangular-clavate, truncate, spathaceous bract, single flowered inflorescence.
"Pleurothallis pudica is easily recognized among the species of the group by the pubescent-hirsute flowers facing down and reclinate over the leaf. The reclination of the perianth, which leaves a quite small space between the flower and the surface of the leaf for allowing the pollinator to explore the flower, is a very uncommon feature in the Pleurothallidinae in general. Apart from the Costa Rican P. phyllocardia , this character has been recorded in only two other species of Pleurothallis subsect. MacrophyllaeFasciculatae: P. valladolidensis Luer, from Ecuador, and P. alopex Luer, from the lowlands of Paraguay. Pleurothallis pudica is the fourth species in the group showing the same arrangement of the flower, which likely corresponds to a still unknown pollination syndrome that appeared independently in the mountains of Central American, in the Andes, and in the forest of eastern South America. Besides the characteristic indumentum of the abaxial surface of the sepals, the flowers of P. pudica can be distinguished from those of P. phyllocardia by the reflexed margins of the sepals, and the angulatedeflexed shape of the petals." Pupulin, J.Aguilar & M.Díaz 2017
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* LANKESTERIANA 17(2): 154 Pupulin, J.Aguilar & M.Díaz 2017 drawing/photo fide;
Vanishing Beauty, Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 2 Lacaena to Pteroglossa Pupulin 2020 photo fide;
Harvard Papers in Botany Vol. 26, No. 1 2021, The Researchgate Website photo/drawing fide;
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