Lepanthes cotyledon Luer 1983 SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Mucronatae Luer 1996

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

Common Name The Cup Like Lepanthes [refers to the cavity of the lip]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in eastern Ecuador at elevations around 1000 to 1200 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with a erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by 8 to 11, close, minutely ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths carrying a single, apical, suberect, reticulate veined, purple beneath, thinly coriaceous, elliptical, long acuminate, rounded and abruptly contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on a filiform, extremely congested, secund, to 1.6" [to 4 cm] long, successively flowered inflorescence with long pedicels and arising on the back of the leaf.

"Distinguished by the broad, thin, crinkly, purple leaves a congested, long-pedicellate raceme shorter than the leaf, petals with a thin, lateral process and a lip with thin, transparent blades adherent over the column and a large concavity filling the body behind a relatively large, oblong appendix with a lobulate apex. " Luer 1996

Similar to L corrugata but differs in the shorter, 8 to 11 [instead of 20 to 22 multisheathed ramicauls and smaller leaves that are similarily thin, crinkly and purple and a congested long-pedicellate raceme shorter than the leaf. petals with the lower lobes rounded [instread of acute]. and a longer, thicker appendix."

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54:336 Luer 1983; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes, Lepanthes subgenus Marsipanthes and subgenus Lepanthes of Ecuador Luer 1996 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide

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