Lepanthes acuminata Schltr. 1912 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Moises Behar Another Flower
Photos by © Jay Pfahl
Photo by © Arturo Carillo
Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Gradually Tapering Point Lepanthes
Flower Size 3/16" [5mm]
Found in Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Venezuela as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cold growing, caespitose epiphyte in elfin forest, montane rain forest, and cloud forest on the trunks and twigs of trees at elevations of 950 to 2200 meters with slender, erect stems that are completely enclosed by 4 to 5, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single apical, ovate-elliptic to suborbicular, coriaceous to fleshy, acuminate and tridentate apically, abruptly narrows below into the petiolate base, green striped with purple on the underside leaf that blooms throughout the year on a distichous, successively single, several flowered, racemose inflorescence that holds the single flower close to the base of the back-side of the leaf.
"This species is closely related to L lindleyana but differs in the lip, the glabrous, differently shaped petals and in the narrower leaves." Schlechter 1912
Synonyms Lepanthes acuminata subsp. ernestii Salazar & Soto Arenas 1996
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR CHECKED type OK; * Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 10: 355. 1912; Venezuelan Orchids Vol 4 Dunsterville & Garay 1966 drawing not = L scolex; Flora de Venezuela Foldats Volumen XV Part 2 1969 drawing fide; Orchids of Venezuela, An Illustrated Field Guide Vol 2 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 drawing not = L scolex; Las Orquedias de El Salvador Vol 3 Hamer 1981 drawing/photo fide; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum plate 814 Dodson 1982 drawing fide; Selbyana Vol 10 Orchids of Central America Hamer 1988 drawing fide; Icones Orchidacearum I Plate 54 1990 drawing fide; El Genero Lepanthes Sw. En Mexico Salazar & Soto 1996 Drawing/photo fide; Orchid Digest Vol 62 #2 1998 photo fide; Guatemala Y Sus Orquideas Behar & Tinschert 1998 photo fide; Lepanthes de Guatemala Archila 2001 photo fide; Guia de Orquideas de Chiapas Carlos Rommel Beutelspacher Baigts 2013 photo ok; Diversity of Pleurothallidinae in Guatemala: An Endangered Orchid Subtribe with High Economic and Horticultural Potentials Edgar Mo Mo, Cetzal, Basu and Vega 2017 photo fide; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018
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