Lepanthes elongata Luer & Hirtz 1987 SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Elongatae 1993 TYPE for the SERIES
Photo by © Daniel Jimenez and His Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Photo courtesy of Patricia Harding
TYPE Dawing by Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The Elongated Lepanthes [refers to the long inflorescence]
Flower Size .28" [.7 cm]
Found in southern Colombia and Ecuador in high cloud forests at elevations of 2700 to 3100 meters as a small to medium sized, cold growing epiphyte with long, slender to stout ramicauls enveloped basally by 8 to 13 close-fitting, microscopically ciliate-scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acute leaf with the base cuneate into the petiole and blooms in the fall and winter on a loose, flexible, strict, successively many flowered, 12" [30 cm] long, racemose inflorescence with oblique floral bracts and the lower flowers distant and subdensely flowered towards the apex and up to 4 flowers opening simultaneously.
"Disitnguished by the long ramicauls, narrowly ovate leaeves and a long, straight, many flowered inflorescence borne by a peduncle as long as to much longer than the leaf. Low in the raceme the flowers are distant but are borne much closer above and sometimes carry 2 to 3 simultanoeusly open flowers. The upper lobes of the petals are long-acuminate. The lip is very similar to that of L biloba which also has ong inflorescence but they are flexuous and borne by short peduncles." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana 2: 99 Luer 1987 Drawing fide; 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; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII Luer 2012 drawing fide; Orchids A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 drawing fide;
