Lepanthes surrogata Luer & Hirtz 1987 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

Photo by © Jean Marc Pallandre and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website

Common Name The Surrogate Lepanthes [refers to the modification of the rostellar flap]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1500 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with slender, suberect to erect ramicauls enveloped by 10 to 13, ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on a filiform, congested, distichous, 1.6" [4 cm] long, successively many flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf and has spiculate floral bracts

"L surrogata is most remarkable in the morphology of the lip and column. The smooth semicircular blades of the lip are lightly adherent over the column. The column is short, the anther and stigma are located near the center of the lip over the sinus of the body. The appendix on the margin of the sinus is tringular and ciliate. Similar in the modified, protruding rostellar flap to L mystax and L necopina." Luer 1996

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana 2: 42 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; Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 photo fide

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