Lepanthes diaziae Luer 1998 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and Lindleyana Vol 13 #3 pg 138 Luer 1998

Common Name Diaz's Lepanthes [honors Dra. Marta Aleida Diaz director of the National Botanical Garden Havana current]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in Holguin province of Cuba in moist forests at elevations of 750 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing, caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3, thin, microscopically ciliate-scabrous leapanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, obtuse, microscopically sparsely ciliate, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect, borne on the back of the leaf, peduncle filiform, .2 to .24" [5 to 6 mm] long, congested, distichous, rachis .12" [3 mm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence with spiculate, shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.

"This tiny species, without know relatives, is known form one area of the Sierra de Nipe in the Oriente of Cuba. It is characterized by the elliptical leaf with a congested inflorescence borne to one side and about half as long as the leaf. The speals are elliptical, acute and denticulate. The petals are forked into slender divergiong lobes. The lunate lobes of the proportionally large lip form indistinct blades, the connectives and body are narrow and the appendix consists of a tuft of long cilia." Luer 1998

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana Vol 13 #3 pg 138 Luer 1998 drawing fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014 drawing fide

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