Lepanthes aurita Luer & R.Escobar 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Wiel Driessen and his Facebook Page
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
EARLY 
Common Name The Large Eared Lepanthes [refers to the petals ]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in southeastern Ecuador in mossy cloud forests at elevations around 2200 to 2750 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 3 to 4, microscopically scabrous lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, convex, elliptical-ovate, obtuse, broadly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring, summer and early fall on a filiform, congested, distichous, .32" [8 mm] long, successively several flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.
"Distinguished by the minute habit, the short congested raceme, entire sepals, proportionally large petals with rounded lobes and the slender blades of the lip witha bisegmented appendix." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54:330 Luer 1983; 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
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