Lepanthes eriocampa Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by © Alexander Hirtz
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
EARLY 
Common Name The Wooly Caterpillar Lepanthes [refers to the appearance of the appendix]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in southeastern Ecuador at elevations around 750 meters as a miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 5 to 11, ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, reticulated in purple beneath, broadly ovate, obtuse to shortly acuminate, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on a filiform, congested, distichous, .64" [1.6 cm] long, successively several flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf .
" Identified by the very congested raceme of an inflorescence shorter than the broad, thinly coriaceous leaves, broadly ovate, glabrous sepals, large petals with the upper lobe broadly rounded, lunate blades of the lip covering the column abnd a hinged, hairy, worm-like appendix reminiscent of an angler fish." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes, Lepanthes subgenus Marsipanthes and subgenus Lepanthes of Ecuador Luer 1996 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XV Systematics of Trichosalpinx Luer 1997; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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