Pleurothallis vorator

I purchased this plant as Pleurothallis crocodiliceps from Equaflor-a a couple years ago.  But it turned out to be P. vorator.  This species is endemic to Province of Nor Yungas, northern Bolivia (Luer 1989) and Zamora-Chinchipe Province, Ecuador (Jørgensen, P. M. and S. León-Yánez, 1999). The elevation range is 1000-3000m (Jørgensen et al. 2014) while Luer (1989) mentioned 2800m.  It seem to grow well at the cool-end of intermediate; max/min daily temperature of 29/18C (84/65F) in the summer and 21/13C (70/55F) in the winter.

The flowers are fairly small relative the moderate size of the plant (about 6-8" height), but it is continuously in flower.  And when you look at the details of the flower, it is a delightful species.

The taller leaves are a little reddish because they happened to be too close to the light.

Luer and Vásquez described P. vorator in 1980 (link to the original description).  The scary sounding species epithet, "vorator", in Latin means a devourer, someone who eats voraciously.  This makes sense when you look at the close-up of the column and the lip in the following photo.  It looks like a head of a predator.  It is a bit difficult to see, but you can see the two fangs sticking up from the side of the lip as well as the sharp tip of the anther cap.

Petals are removed to show the column and the lip.

Each tick of the ruler is 1mm.

column and ovary

The lip is cup-shaped, and it looks approximately circular from the top.  This is one of the distinguishing character of this species in the artificial key of Luer (1986).

Lips from two flowers. The left one shows the adaxial (front) surface, The top edge is the place where it was attached to the base of the column. For the profile view (right), the bottom right side was attached to the base of the column. The fangs  are kind of dull in this photo because I didn't handle it gently enough. 

Anther cap and pollinia

Here is the illustration from Luer (1989) Icones Pleurothallidinarum VI (3 photos of this species by S. Manning in Swiss Orchid Foundation site are apparently misidentified):

© Missouri Botanical Garden. 1989. Pleurothallis vorator Luer & R.Vásquez. Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Herbarium Jany Renz. Botanical Institute, University of Basel, Switzerland.

Literature cited:

• Jørgensen, P. M. and S. León-Yánez. 1999. Catalogue of the Vascular Plants of Ecuador. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden, v. 75. Missouri Botanical Garden Press, Missouri, USA
• Jørgensen, P. M., M. H. Nee(Editor), S. G. Beck (eds) 2014. Catálogo de las Plantas Vasculares de Bolivia -- Monographs in systematic botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden, v. 127. Missouri Botanical Garden Press, Missouri, USA, p.900
• Luer, C. A. 1989. Icones Pleurothallidinarum VI. Systematics of Pleurothallis subgenus Ancipitia, subgenus Scopula and Trisetella, Addendum to Porroglossum.  Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St. Louis, MO, USA, p. 50-51