Platystele examen-culicum Luer 1976
SUBGENUS Platystele
Photo by © Duane McDowell and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Photo by Ecuagenera © and their Ecuador Orchid Website
Original Drawing by © Padre Pedro Ortiz Conserved at the Herbario de la Universidad Javeriana, Bogota Colombia
Photo by © Oliver Lenhard
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
to 
Common Name The Mosquito Swarm Platystele [reference to the appearance of the many small flowers]
Flower Size 1/32" [3 mm]
Found in Colombia and Ecuador at elevations of 1500 to 2800 meters as a miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with erect to suberect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3 ribbed, imbricating sheaths and carrying a single, apical, eret, coriaceous, narrowly elliptic-obovate, subbacute to obtuse leaf that is narrowly cuneate into the petiole and blooms in the spring on an erect to suberect, loose, distichous, flexuous, 2.4 to 6" [6 to 15 cm] long including the .6 to 1.2" [1.5 to 3 cm] long peduncle, successively few to many flowered, racemose inflorescence arising laterally from the ramicaul and having oblique floral bracts.
Synonyms Platystele culex Luer & R. Escobar 1981
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VII Systematics of Platystele Luer 1990 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003 drawing/photo fide; Orchid Species of Peru Zelenko & Bermudez 2009 photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 89 #11 2020 photo fide;
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