Lepanthes venusta Luer & R.Escobar 1994 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Sebastian Vieira and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
Photo by © Jean Marc Palandre and Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Website
LATER 
Common Name or Meaning The Beautiful Lepanthes
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Antioquia and Risaralda departments of Colombia in cloud forests at elevations around 2700 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 5 to 8, microscopically ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths with acuminate apices and carrying a single, apical, suberect, coriaceous, convex, rose-grey and stippled beneath, ovate, subacute, rounded and cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later spring on a congested, distichous, filiform, .2 to 1.72" [5 to 1.7 cm] long including the .12 to .64" [.3 to 1.6 cm] long peduncle, successively single, few flowered inflorescence and holding the flower at mid leaf
" The species is characterized by small, ovate, rose-gray leaves stippled beneath, and a shorter inflorescence. The sepals are ovate, acuminate with short tails and minutely toothed; tile wing -like petals are unequally bilobed with the upper lobe larger; and the blades of the lip are oblong with a narrow body and a small appendix with a fascicle of long, apical cilia." Carl Luer 1999
Synonyms Lepanthes arethusa Luer & R.Escobar 1999
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Orquideologia Vol 19 #1 pg 120 1994 drawing fide; Orquideología Vol 21 #2 pg 135–137 Luer & R.Escobar 1999 as L arethusa drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII Luer 2012 drawing fide; Orchids A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 drawing/photo fide;
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