Lepanthes callisto Luer & Hirtz 1987 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Andreas Kay and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Photos by © Jay Pfahl
TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning Callisto's Lepanthes [Greek nymph Kallisto turned into a black bear an allusion to the dark, coarsely pubescent, lepanthiform sheaths]
Flower Size .2" [5mm]
Found in southern Colombia and northern Ecuador at elevations of 3100 to 3200 meters as a miniature to small sized, cold growing epiphyte with stout, erect ramicauls enveloped completely by 6 to 13, blackish, coarsely ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, remarkably convex, dark green, purple beneath, oblong, subacute to obtuse, abrupty short-acuminate, rounded base is contracted into a petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a very congested, distichous, erect, 2" [5 cm] long, successively single flowered inflorescence carrying a hanging, never opening fully, remaining campanulate flower.
"Easily recognized by the stout ramicaul enveloped by dark, coarsely ciliate, leapanthiform sheaths. The thickly coriaceous, dark green leaf is convex, with the comparitively large, dark purple flower borne in the cavity of the under surface of the leaf which is intensely suffused with purple." Luer 1996
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; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2001 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII 2012 drawing fide; Orchids A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 photo fide;
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