Lepanthes meganthera Luer & Hirtz 1987 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996
Photos by © Andreas Kay and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer © and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name The Large Anther Lepanthes
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Ecuador at elevations around 1400 to 2450 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with an erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by 7 to 8, coarsely ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, purple veined, ovate, subacute, rounded below into the contracted petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on a filiform, very congested, to .32" [8 mm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.
"The blades of the lip are glabrous, ovate and acuminate. The appendix is proportionally large, oblong and pubescent with a trilobed gland at the apex. The appendix is held beneath the large stigmatic surface that occupies the area below the lip." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana 2: 38 Luer & Hirtz 1987 Drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes, Lepanthes subgenus Marsipanthes and subgenus Lepanthes of Ecuador Luer 1996 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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