Lepanthes barbelifera Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Fransisco Tobar and Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Barbel-Bearing Lepanthes [refers to the barbels on the lip and petals]
Flower Size 1/4" [6 mm]
foundin Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations of 1500 to 1800 meters as a mini-miniature, caespitose, cool growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 3 to 6, minutely ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, suberect to spreading, thinly coriaceous, reticulated, elliptical, subacute to obtuse, margins entore or faintly undulate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a congested, subsecund, successively single, several-flowered raceme held on or just above the leaf with shorter than the pedicel, minutely echinate floral bracts. .
This species is a relative of L. calodictyon but differs by having smaller leaves with deep green reticulations and non-undulate margins. The petals consist of a single, transversly oblong lobe with filamentous tails occuring from both margins above the base and most of all the subquadrate lip with a slender tail produced from the bases that surround the column.
Similar to the wide-ranging L calodictyon and sufficiently different from the following to be separate species L. bibarbullata , L microcalodictyon L pantominia, L pretiosa, L salatrix L tentacula, L. tortuosa Luer & Hirtz, L volador and the recently described species L. kayii.
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
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