Lepanthes conchilabia Luer & Hirtz 1998 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer © and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

Common Name The Ear Like Lip Lepanthes

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Imbabura province of Ecuador at elevations around 3500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 6 to 7, close, lepanthiform sheaths with microscopically scabrous ribs and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, more or less suffused with purple beneath, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on a slender, lax, to 1" [2.5 cm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence.

"Distinguished by the small habit with narrow elliptical leaves, a shoter lax, few flowered inflorescence carrying flowers with single veined lateral sepals. The sepals are ovate, acute and glabrous, the petals are transversely pandurate. The lobes of the lip are arcuate and convex with a lateral groove that suggests an attempt to form a blade. The concave inner surfaces enclose tha long, arcuate column and the transverse body is connate to the mid portion of the column, The lobes arise from the body without connectives and there is no appendix." Luer 1998

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidianrum Vol XVI Systematics of pleurthallis SUBGENERA Crocodeilanthe, Rhunchopera, Talpinaria Luer 1998 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide

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