Lepanthes caloptera Luer 1984 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

HOLOTYPE by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Webpage

LATE

Common Name The Beautiful Wing Lepanthes [refers to the petals}

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Panama in cloud forests of Cerro Jefe at elevations around 900 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing, caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect, ramicauls enveloped by 4 to 6, dark brown, minutely ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coricaceous, broadly elliptical, subacute to obtuse, broadly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late fall on an erect, borne on top of the leaf, peduncle filiform, .4 to .48" [1 to 1.2 cm] long, rachis .2" [5 mm] long, congested, distichous, successively single, several flowered inflorescence with muricate, shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.

"This species with a congested raceme shorter than the elliptical leaf is most remarkable for the more or less equally falcate lobes of the petals longer than the sepals and a thick, finger-like appendix in close proximity to the stigma." Luer 1984

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 55: 180. Luer & Vasquez 1984;

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