Lepanthes chorista Luer & Hirtz 1992 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by Thomas Ditlevsen © and his Thomas Orchids Flickr Photo site
Photos by Milan Vágner ©
Photos by Fransisco Tobar © and his Flickr Ecuador orchids Photo site
TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The ? Lepanthes [refers to the appendix shape as a cutter or yacht]
Flower Size 1/10" [3 mm]
Found in southeastern Ecuador to northeastern Peru in cloud forests at elevations around 1200 to 1600 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped basally by several lepanthiform sheaths with dilated ostia carrying a single, apical, coriaceous, purplish beneath, ovate, subacute, shortly acuminate, broadly cuneate to rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a congested, distichous, .4" [10 mm] successively several flowered inflorescence borne behind the leaf.
"Distinguished by the ovate, purplish leaves borne by a relatively stout, ciliate, lepanthiform shethed ramicauls and a short, congested raceme borne behind the leaf. The red, green-edged sepals are microscopically denticulate. The orange prtals are oblong with truncate ends. The thin blades of the lip are adherent to each other over the column. The connectives are free from each other, being connate indivdually to the base of the column with the pedunculated appendix between. A similar abscence of a body is seen in L disjuncta." Luer 1996
The First photo is the most correct to the drawing by Luer. The other 2 differ not only in color, but in the lip shape and the finger-like processes on the apical gland
Synonyms
Checked per Luer
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; Orchid Species of Peru Zelenko Bermudez 2009 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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