Lepanthes asoma Luer & Hirtz 1986 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by © Alexander Hirtz
Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
LATER 
EARLIER 
Common Name The Body-less Lepanthes [refers to the absence of the lip body]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in southeastern Ecuador at elevations around 1800 to 2600 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 4 to 5, darkly colored, tight fitting, minutely ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, suberect to spreading, coriaceous, purple suffused, ovate, acute, obtuse to rounded below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later summer and earlier fall on a filiform, congested, distichous, .4" [1 cm] long, successively few flowered inflorescence arising on the top of the leaf and has sparsely short-spiculate floral bracts.
" Characterized by the diminutive habit with a short inflorescence borne behinnd the ovate leaf. The sepals are obtuse, the red-orange upper lobes of the petals stand erect in the flower and the oblique, diverging blades of the lip are borne by short connectives with a vestigal body, if any body at all. The appendix is external, ovate and concave and it protrudes from the sinus between the connectives." 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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
