Lepanthes absens Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

Common Name The Absent Lepanthes [refers to the missing appendix]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Pastaza province of Ecuador on the eastern slopes of the Andes at elevations around 2200 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 10 to 12, microscopically scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, suberect, coriaceous, ovate, acute,rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on a slender, erect, congested, distichous, .16" [4 mm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence with muriculate floral bracts.

"Characterized by the congested inflorescence shorter than the ovate, acuminate leaf, broad, obtuse, denticulate sepals, transversely bilobed petals with an obtusely angled upper lobe and a triangular lower lobe, oblong blades of the lip witha thick body concave on the anterior margin without ana pparent appendix." Luer 1996

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *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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