Lepanthes crista-pulli Luer & R.Escobar 1983 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 Comb of the Chick Lepanthes [refers to crested appendix]

Flower Size .08" [2 mm]

Found in Morona Santiago province of Ecuador at elevations around 1650 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 3 to 4, minutely scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-ovate, acute, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a filiform loose, to .8" [2 cm] long, successively single, few flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.

Distinguished by the narrowly elliptic leaves and a short loosely flowered inflorescence with minutely pubescent, ovate sepals, transversely oblong petals, and a bilaminate lip with a forked, crest-like appendix on the external surface of the body.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54:338 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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