Plants up to 25 cm tall. Leaves 3–6, basal, rosulate, petiolate; petiole ca one cm long; blade 3.5–6 cm long and up to 2.5 cm wide, elliptic to oblong-elliptic, acute, more or less narrowed below. Peduncle slender, glabrous below, finely glandular-pubescent above, provided with few (1–3) remote tubular sheaths, terminated by a loosely to subdensely few- to several-flowered raceme rarely up to eight cm long. Flowers small, white, with the ovary and sepals (especially the lateral ones) densely glandular-tomentose within. Floral bracts five mm long, ovate to ovate-lanceolate,
sparsely glandular. Pedicellate ovary 12 mm long, densely glandular. Dorsal sepal about 5.8–7 mm long, ca 2.3–3 mm wide, elliptic-lanceolate or ovate-elliptic, acute or acuminate, 3- or 5-veined. Petals unguiculate, claw free part ca 1.5 mm long; blade five to six mm long, 2.5–3 mm wide, very obliquely oblong-triangular, rounded or obtuse at the apex, with the outer margin concave and more or less irregular, vein 1, basally branching. Lateral sepals seven mm long, four mm wide, free to more or less connivent, ovate to ovate-elliptic or ovate-lanceolate, acute or obtuse, veins 5, branching. Lip unguiculate, claw up to two mm long; lamina up to five mm long and three mm wide, broadly ovate to transversely rhombic, obscurely 3-lobed at the apex, concave-conduplicate in natural position, vein with dendric branches, with a transverse, triangular, cucullate callus at the base; the middle lobe narrowly ligulate. Gynostemium two to three mm long, subsessile (Fig. 25).
Ecology: Terrestrial. Flowering in May and August.

Notes: According to Schweinfurth (1958), P. mandonii possesses a transverse, triangular, cucullate callus at the base of the lip lamina, but we were not able to observe it in the material we examined. This species is easily separable from any other Ponthieva species known from NW part of South America by its lip form with very unique dendritic venation. We found similar lip form in Colombian material cited above, but this specimen differs from the type of P. mandonii in having connate lateral sepals and falcate elliptic-ovate petals