IANKESTERIANA2 11-13 2001


 STELLILABIUM ERRATUM, A COMEDY OF BLUNDERS


 ROBERT L. DRESSLER

 Missouri Botanical Garden, P.O. Box 299, St. Louis, Missouri 63166-0299, U.S.A.
 Florida Museum of Natural History; Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
 Mailing address: 21305 NW 86th Ave., Micanopy, Florida 32667, U.S.A.


RESUMEN. Se describe Stellilabium erratum, una especie de Tapanti y el valle del Rio Pejibaye, de
plant y flores relativamente grandes para el g6nero. La column y el labelo son trilobados y los
16bulos laterales de la column llevan setas conspicuas.

KEY WORDS: Orchidaceae, Stellilabium sect. Taeniorhachis, Stellilabium erratum, Costa Rica


 The collection of tiny orchids for botanical study
is frustrating. If it is available, one gathers what
seems to be abundant material but when the plants
are dried, there is little left. The plant to be
described here is large for a Stellilabium, being
about 20 cm tall and branched. Even so, each plant
may have few flowers at a given moment. I first
saw the species along the Rio Pejibaye at La Selva
de Cartago in 1984, where we were mistakenly
calling the locality Taus, which I mistakenly
spelled as Taos. Being reluctant to gather enough
material for a good specimen, I convinced myself
that it must be a named species. We photographed a
flower, and a photograph was published in the
Field Guide (Plate 30, fig. 4, Dressler 1993) as
Stellilabium bullpenense Atwood, which it is not by
any stretch of the imagination. A few minutes after
photographing that Stellilabium, we crossed a pas-
ture and found another species at the edge of the
forest. This tiny plant, with a single flower, was
pressed and I later made a label for it, as number
310 of the plants collected by Dressler and Biologia
350 and sent the label to the University of Costa
Rica Herbarium (USJ), where the first set of speci-
mens is deposited.
 When I looked at the Stellilabium specimens at
USJ in 1999, I found my label number 310
mounted with a plant of the large plant from the
gallery forest. Someone else had pressed a
specimen, and the tiny plant for which the label
was intended was simply lost among the newspa-
pers.
 Later specimens were collected by Dressler and


Mora in 1991, by Atwood and Mora in 1992, and
by Pupulin, Spadari and the Orchidology Course in
2000. The best of these specimens originally had
several flowers but they were destroyed by insects.
The remaining specimens have only a few flowers,
but the label of Atwood & Mora 4202 mentions two
flowers in alcohol. I asked Franco Pupulin to
search for the flowers in alcohol, and he found
them to be the same as his own collection from the
same locality. There is not much good material of
this species, but it is more than is available of most
other Central American species of Stellilabium and
with Franco's excellent drawing it can finally
receive a name.

Stellilabium (Taeniorhachis) erratum Dressler, sp.
nov. FIG. 1.
 TYPE: COSTA RICA. Cartago: Canton Paraiso,
Dist. Orosi, Tapanti, Sendero Orop6ndola, en P. N.
Tapanti, 1350 m, 2 nov. 1992, epifita, flores
moradas, J. T. Atwood & D. E. Mora 4202 (holo-
type, USJ).

 Rhachis alata, labellum trilobatum, medio infla-
tum; column trilobata, lobulis lateralibus setis stel-
latis praedita, lobulo medio hispido.

Roots flattened, 1.5-2 mm wide; leaves 16-37 x 3-
4 mm, elliptic-oblanceolate, acute; stems basally
terete, then sulcate; peduncular bracts 1.8-2.4 x 1.5
mm, acute; rachis flattened, 1-1.2 mm wide, up to
16 cm long; floral bracts 1-1.2 x 1.3 mm, triangular,
acute; pedicel and ovary 6.5 mm; flowers dark
wine-purple; dorsal sepal 3-3.5 x 2-2.2 mm, ovate,