Lepanthes ephalmatrix Luer & Hollowell 2010 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

Photo by © Bruno Larsen and his Flickr Orchid Photo Webpage

Common Name The Tumbling Dancer Lepanthes [an allusion to the fancied appearance of the flower]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Napo province of Ecuador on the eastern slopes of the Andes in cloud forests at elevations around 1850 to 1950 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 5 to 7, thin, pale, ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths with dilated ostia and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, purple suffused beneath, ovate, subacute, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall and winter on a filiform, congested, distichous, .54 to 72" [1.3 to 1.8 cm] long including the .2 to .4" [.5 to 1 cm] long peduncle, successively single, few flowered inflorescence arising on the top of the leaf and has oblique foral bracts.

Similar to the Bolivian L orchestris and sometimes treated as a synonym of, L ephalmatrix differs in the smaller habit, erect, ovate leaves [instead of pendent] and smaller flowers that are 1/2 the size of L orchestris

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXI Luer 2010 drawing fide;

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