Lepanthes elytrifera Luer & L.Jost 1999 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo/TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and Epidendra Webpage
LATE 
EARLY 
Common Name The Beetle Wing Cover Lepanthes
Flower Size .25" [6 mm]
Found in Ecuador in montane forests at elevations around 2250 meters as a miniature to small sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped by 12 to 14, glabrous, lepanthiform sheaths with thickened margins and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, elliptic, shortly acuminate, rounded and abruptly contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on a slender, congested, distichous, to 1.8" [to 4.5 cm] long, successively many flowered inflorescence arising behind the leaf and with acuminate floral bracts.
"Superficially similar to L condorensis but differs in the free sepasl and the blades ofthe lip are oblong with the outer halves membraneous and thickened medially with the connectives. The appendix is forked above the middle." Luer 1999
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVIII Systematics of Pleurothallis subsection Antenniferae, Longiracemosae, Macrophyllae-Racemosae and Subgenera Pseudsostelis and Acuminata Luer 1999drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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