Lepanthes fractiflexa Ames & C.Schweinf. 1930 SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Elongatae 1993
Photo by © Julio Larramendi
TYPE Sheet and Drawing by © Ames & C.Schweinf. and The Harvard Herbarium website
Common Name The Fractiflex Lepanthes [refers to the inflorescence]
Flower Size .08" [2 mm]
Found in Cuba as a mini-miniature sized, caespitose, cool growing lithophyte or occasional epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by up to 5, cornucopiate, marginate, acuminate, , glabrous to muriculate leapanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, elliptic to obovate, fleshy, purple beneath, acute, tridenticulate, narrowing below into the sessile base leaf that blooms at most any time of the year on a terminal, arising on the adaxial side of the leaf, filiform, fractiflex, 1.6 to 2.8" [4 to 7 cm] long, much longer than the leaf, distally distichously, successively 2 to 3, several flowered inflorescence.
"It recalls L loddigesiana but differs from that species in its smaller leaves, relatively much longer peduncles, larger flowers and the obscure middle lobe of the lip. L dussii is similar in habit." Ames and Schweinfurth 1930
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Harvard Herbarium Website; Orchidaceae Antillanae Nir 2000; The Orchids of Cuba Llamacho and Larramendi 2005 photo fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014
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