Lepanthes eruca Luer & Hirtz 1987 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by © Bruno Larsen and his Flickr Orchid Photo Webpage
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
LATE 
Common Name The Caterpillar-Like Lepanthes [refers to the appearance of the appendix]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in southeastern Ecuador at elevations around 2000 to 2700 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 7 to 11, ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, suffused with purple beneath and along the margins above, ovate, acute, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and fall on a filiform, dense, distichous, 1.32" [3.3 cm] long, successively many flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf and carrying echinate floral bracts.
"A pretty purple leaved species with ovate sepals, the laterals denticulate, the upper lobe of the petals is broadly angled medially and the lower lobe is broadly uncinate. The connectives barely unite at their junction with the column where a caterpillar like appendix is found The non-union of the connectives suggest a relationship with a couple other species found nearby L chorista and L disjuncta." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana 2: 135. 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
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