Lepanthes actias-luna Luer & Hirtz 1987 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © S Manning and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The Actias Luna-Like Lepanthes [refers to the flowers resemblance to the wings of the moth Actias luna]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in southwestern Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1000 meters as a small sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with stout, erect ramicauls enveloped by 9 to 16, coarsly ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, oblong-ovate, obtuse, shortly acuminate leaf that blooms in the fall on a congested, distichous, successively many flowered, racemose, 1.8" [4.5 cm] long inflorescence arising from behind the leaf
Similar to L athena but differs in the larger flowers with broad, overlapping, caudate upper lobes and lower lobes that are abruptly contracted into a slender glabrous tail.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana 2: 30 Luer & Hirtz 1987 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes, Lepanthes subgenus Marsipanthes and subgenus Lepanthes of Ecuador Luer 1996 drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2001 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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