Lepanthes cotylisca Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996
Alfonso Doucette
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer © and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name The Little Cup Lepanthes [refers to the cup-like lip]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Carchi province of Ecuador at elevations around 2200 to 3000 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 8 to 10, microscopically scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acute, apiculate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring and summer on a weak, loose, to 1.6" [4 cm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.
Distinguished by the thin ramicauls, the narrowly ovate leaves and a distantly flowered inflorescence that eventually almost reaches the apex of the leaf. The flower has one veined lateral sepals with a suborbicular lip that forms a cup surrounding the column. The apex of the lip is bilobed with a small appendix in the sinus.
Synonyms
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;
Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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