Lepanthes expansa Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Wiel Driessen and his Facebook Page
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
AGAIN in 
Common Name The Spread Out Lepanthes [refers to the widely expanded petals]
Flower Size .16" [4 mm]
Found in Esmeraldas province of Ecuador at elevations around 750 to 800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 5 to 7, minutely ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, spreading, coriaceous, purplish, elliptical, acute, cuneate and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer and again in the winter on a filiform, congested, .24" [6 mm] long, successively several flowered inflorescence arising on the top of the leaf.
"The flowers with bright purple, widely spread petals, are large compared to the small, spreading leaf upon which they lie. The lower lobes of the petals are prominently falcate. The blades of the lip are convex and minutely pubescent." 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; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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