Lepanthes caranqui Tobar & Monteros 2021 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
LCDP Photo/TYPE drawing by © Francisco Tobar and Phytokeys 180: 111–132 2021
Common Name The Caranqui Lepanthes [Honors the Caranqui culture that historically occupied the same areas where this species is distributed]
Flower Size .32" [8 mm]
Found in Imbabura and Pichincha provinces of Ecuador in either paramo cloud forests or evergreen montane forests on roadside embankments at elevations around 3500 to 3700 meters as a medium sized, cold growing terrestrial with arcuate to pendulous, 6 to 12 noded ramicauls enveloped completely by light brown, papillose lepanthiform sheaths with microscopically muricate and acuminate ostium and carrying a single, apical, arcuate, slightly concave, ovate to oblong, light to dark green, long-attenuate, tridenticulate apically, cuneate and contracted below into a petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall and winter on a racemose, one per stem, peduncle filiform, .04 to .06" [1 to 1.5 mm] long, provided with a basal bract, shorter than the leaf, .04 to 2.24" " [1 to 5.6 cm] long overall, successively single, few flowered inflorescence with distichous, glabrous, apiculate, shorter tha the ovary floral bracts.
"Lepanthes caranqui is morphologically most similar to L. pachychila from the southwest of Ecuador, it differs in having taller plants, petals narrowly triangular-oblong, the lip blade thick, broadly ovate with rounded ends, appendix triangular in the dorsal view, with two protuberances on the top and a minute tuft of hairs at the base. The new species also resembles L. ballatrix which is widespread in Ecuador and Colombia and L. chrysina endemic from the southwest of Ecuador. Both species have a triangular, acute dorsal sepal (vs. broadly-ovate, narrowly acuminate). The petal lobes in L. ballatrix are suborbicular to broadly elliptical, and in L. chrysina the upper lobe is oblong, obtuse and the lower obliquely triangular (vs. petals equal, narrowly triangularoblong in L. caranqui), the lip blades is glabrous in L. chrysina and minutely pubescent in L. ballatrix and L. caranqui, and are oblong lunate in L. ballatrix and ovate-oblong in L. chrysina and L. caranqui. The appendix in L. caranqui is triangular pubescent with two protuberances on the top, and in L. ballatrix is triangular, minutely pubescent, thickened at the end, with a pair of minute finger like process." Tobar , Lopex, Gavilanes, Monteros, Garcia and Graham 2021
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytokeys 180: 111–132 Three new endemic species of Lepanthes (Orchidaceae, Pleurothallidinae) from the highlands of Ecuador Tobar , Lopex, Gavilanes, Monteros, Garcia and Graham 2021 Drawing/photo fide
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