Lepanthes stupenda Luer 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by Rodrigo Escobar
Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuador Orchid Website
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer and The Epidendra Website
Common Name or Meaning The Stupendous Lepanthes [refers to the large flower]
Flower Size 1.2 x .4" [3 cm tall, 1 cm wide]
Found in Colombia and northwestern Ecuador in wet montane and scrub cloud forests at elevations aound 1200 to 3200 meters as a small to medium sized, warm to cold growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 8 to 14 lepanthiform sheaths with minutely ciliate margins and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, reticulated, elliptical-ovate, acute, acuminate, cuneate to rounded below and contracted into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall and spring on a slender, congested, distichous, to 2.32" [to 5.8 cm] long including the .6 to 1.12” [1.5 to 2.8 cm] long peduncle, filiform, successively many flowered, racemose inflorescence arising from behind the leaf.
"Identified by the congersted raceme much shorter than the large leaf with an acuminate apex. The flowers are large, more than 1.2" [3 cm] tall. The sepals are pubescent below the middle, thepetals are small and obtuse and the blades of the lip are ovate. The appendix is a minute pedunculate organ at the apex of the sinus." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54: 372 Luer 1983; Native Colombian Orchids Vol 5 COS 1994 photo 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; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII Luer 2012 drawing fide; Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 drawing/photo fide;
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