Lepanthes caudigera Luer & Hirtz 1998 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Andreas Kay and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and Epidendra Webpage
Common Name The Tail Bearing Lepanthes [refers to the projecting column and lip]
Flower Size .12" [3mm]
Found in Carchi province of Ecuador at elevations around 2100 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 6 to 7, minutely ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, broadly ovate, obtuse, broadly cuneate to rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a slender, racemose, congested, distichous, to .2" [5 mm] long, successively few flowered inflorescence arising behind the leaf and has glabrous floral bracts.
Distinguished by the short inflorescence, much shorter than the broadly, ovate leaf. The sepals are long-acumnate or with slender tails. The lobes of the petals are broadly and obliquely triangularm and about equal in size and shape. The blades of the lip arte attached at the bases to the column near the middle. The appendix is plow-shpaed along the under surface of the column.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVI Systematics of Pleurothallis subgenera Crocodeilanthe, Rhynchopera and Talpinaria Luer 1998 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
