Lepanthes craticia Luer 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Bruno Larsen and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
EARLY 
Common Name The Latticed Lepanthes [refers to the densely flowered rachis]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in southeastern Ecuador at elevations around 2650 to 2950 meters as a small sized, cold growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 10 to 18, glabrous, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, elliptical, acute to acuminate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer through early fall on a filiform, congested, distichous, 2.4" [6 cm] long, successively flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.
L cratica is distinguished by the congested, distichous raceme shorter than the leaf, the reniform petals, the glabrous blades of the lip with an oblong appendix carrying a truncate, apical segment." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54:337 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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