Lepanthes tapantiensis Pupulin & Bogarín 2012
SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Elongatae 1993
Photos/TYPE Drawing by © Franco Pupulin and The Epidendra Website
Common Name The Tapanti Lepanthes [A national park where the species occurs]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Costa Rica premontane rainforests at elevations around 1470 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with suberect, slender ramicauls enveloped completely by 2 to 3, glabrous, whitish, lepanthiform sheaths with slightly dilated, acute ostia and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, elliptic to obovate-elliptic , rounded, minutely retuse, with a short abaxial apicule,cuneate below into the short, conduplicate petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on a slender, terete, loose, distichous, 1.12" [2.8 cm] long including the .52” [1.3 cm] long peduncle, successively many flowered, inflorescence arising on the top of the leaf with 2 to 3, brownish, adpressed, lanceoalte, acute bracts and glumaceous, glabrous, broadly lanceolate floral bracts.
Similar to L johnsonii but this one has glabrous sheaths instead of hispidulous, florally crenulate margins of the sepals versus smooth, the distinctly bilobed, obreniform petals with the 2 lobes separated by a small round, apicule versus subentire narrowly triangular and without an apicule and the lip is provided with papillose blades at the apices versus glabrous as in L johnsonii.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Orch. Digest 76(1): 25. Pupulin & Bogarin 2012 Drawing fide; Anales del Jardín Botánico de Madrid 71(1): e001 2014 photo/drawing fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 84 #7 Karremans & Jimenez 2015
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