Lepanthes aprina Luer & L.Jost 1999 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Andreas Kay and his His Flickr Orchid Photo Website.
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
LATE 
Common Name The Wild Boar Lepanthes [refers to the tusk like tails of the sepals]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Tungurahua province of Ecuador at elevations around 2210 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with a slender, suberect ramicaul enveloped by 9 to 10, minutely scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths with widely dilated, ciliate margined ostia and carrying a single, apical, pendent, rigidly coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acute, convex, sulcate medially, cuneate and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late spring on a slender, pendent, subcongested, distichous, .4" [1 cm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence arising within the sulcus on the dorsum of the leaf.
Related to L manabiba as far as vegetation goes but the flower is related to L dodsonii. The tusk like upturned apices of the lateral sepals resemble those of both species and also Scaphopepalum rapax. The ruby red flowers are born on a short inflorescence nestled in the sulcus of a pendent leaf and the blades of the lip are glabrous.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVIII Systematics of Pleurothallis subsection Antenniferae, Longiracemosae, Macrophyllae-Racemosae and Subgenera Pseudsostelis and Acuminata Luer 1999 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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