Lepanthes echidna Luer & R.Vásquez 1984 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Webpage

EARLY

Common Name The Prickly Lepanthes [an allusion to the spiney anteater and fancied appearance of the flower]

Flower Size .36" [9 mm]

Found in Bolivia in cloud forests at elevations around 1850 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 3 to 8, ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths with dilated ostia and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, ovate, obtuse, shortly acuminate, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on a filiform, subdense, flexuous, to 72" [1.8 cm] long including the .28" [7 mm] long peduncle, successively single, few several flowered inflorescence arising from the back of the leaf.

Part of the group of species related to L complicata by the outer margins of the lateral sepals that are involute to expose the muriculate exterior. The majority of these are from Bolivia and are L ciliolata, L complicata, L crista-piscis, L ciliolata, L panisca, L pileata, L ptyxis, L ringens

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 55: 183. Luer & Vasquez 1984; ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXI Luer 2010 drawing fide;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------