Pleurothallis quadricaudata Schltr. 1920 SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Pleurothallis SUBSECTION Acroniae SERIES Amphygiae Luer 1998

Photo courtesy of © Lourens Grobler

Common Name The Four Tailed Pleurothallis

Flower Size .8" [2 cm]

Found in Colombia and Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1600 meters as a miniature to small sized, warm growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped basally by close tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, subspreading,sessile, avate, long mucronate, basally rounded to cuneate leaf that blooms in the fall on a fascile of single flowered, .4 to .8" [1 to 2 cm] long inflorescence arising through a reclining spathe.

" SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Pleurothallis SUBSECTION Acroniae SERIES Amphygiae Luer 1998 contains several species with proportionately large flowers, the lateral sepals completely connate into a long, narrowly attenuate synsepal, with the similarly shaped petals varying from two-thirds as long to as long as the synsepal. Pleurthallis quadricaudata Schltr. and P tetrachaeta Luer share a triangular-sagittate lip with a narrowly acute apex, while the apical lobe of the lip of P. tipuloides Luer Luer is narrowly triangular with a sharply acute apex. The lip of P. thoerleae is short and rounded, with an abruptly protruding apiculum." Luer 2012

Synonyms Acronia quadricaudata (Schltr.) Luer 2005; Pleurothallis arachnion Luer 1980

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Die Orchideen der Sudamerikanischen Kordillerenstaaten II Colombia Schlechter 1920; Icones Pleurothallidinarum---III. Systematics of Pleurothallis Luer 1986 Icones Pleurothallidinarum XVII. Systematics of Pleurothallis Luer 1998 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVII Luer 2005 as Acronia quadricaudata; Harvard Papers in Botany, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 333 to 368 2012 MISCELLANEOUS NEW SPECIES IN THE PLEUROTHALLIDINAE (ORCHIDACEAE) Carlyle A. Luer and Lisa Thoerle as Acronia quadraticaudata drawing fide

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