Pleurothallis expansa Lindl. 1859 SUBGENUS Crocodeilanthe [Rchb.f & Warsc.]Luer 1986

Photo by © Alexander Hirtz and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

THROUGH

Common Name The Expanded Pleurothallis [refers to the wide open flowers with the broad dorsal sepal

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Colombia and Ecuador at elevations of 2000 to 3970 meters as a small to large sized, cold growing epiphyte with fasciculate to superposed, stout, erect ramicauls with a tubular sheath below the middle and 2 to 3 imbricating sheaths at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, broadly elliptical-ovate, subacute to obtuse, rounded below into the subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer through fall on 1 to 3, distichous to secund, densely and simultaneously many flowered inflorescnece arising through a foliaceous spathe from an annulus below the abscission layer and has inflated floral bracts.

Synonyms Crocodeilanthe expansa (Lindl.) Luer 2004; Humboltia expansa (Lindl.) Kuntze 1891, Stelis expansa (Lindl.) Pridgeon & M.W.Chase 2001

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Systematics of Pleurothallis Vol 3 Luer 1986 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVI Luer 1998 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003 photo fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVI Luer 2004 as Crocodeilanthe expansa

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