Lepanthes filamentosa Luer & Hirtz 1993 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves SERIES Filamentosae
Photo by © Peter Bryder
TYPE by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Filamentous Lepanthes
Flower Size .6" [1.5 cm]
Found in Valle de Cauca department of Colombia and north western Ecuador in cloud forests buried in thick layers of mosses of small branches of trees at elevations around 750 to 800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloepd by 3 to 5, microscopically ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptica, obtuse to subacute, prominently apiculate, microscopically cellular cilate margins, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on a filiform, subdense, distichous, .68 to 1" [1.7 to 2.5 cm] long including the .4 to .72" [1 to 1.8 cm] long peduncle, successively single, several flowered inflorescence with muriculate floral bracts.
"Mature plants of this speis are some of the smallest known in the genus. The flowers are also minute but the lengths of the exceedingly long, filamentosous tails of the sepals and the filamentous lobes of the petals create dimensions comparable to flowers of species with much larger plants." Luer 1996
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Novon 3: 448 Luer 1993 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes, Lepanthes subgenus Marsipanthes and subgenus Lepanthes of Ecuador Luer 1996 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2001 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII Luer 2012 drawing fide; Lankesteriana 18: 183 Baquero & J S Moreno 2018 photo fide; Orchids A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 drawing/photo fide; Orquideas de Farallones de Cali Galindo-Tarazona, Haelterman, Zuluaga Trochez and Sebastian Moreno 2020 photo fide
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