Lepanthes exserta Luer & Hirtz 1998 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

Side View of Flower Photos by © Alexander Hirtz

TYPE Drawing Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

Common Name The Protruding Lepanthes [refers to the projecting column and lip]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in Carchi province of Ecuador at elevations around 2100 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with a very slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 10 to 12, ciliate lepanthiform sheaths with acuminate ostia and carrying a single, apical, spreading, thinly coriaceous, ovate, acute, broadly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on a slender, congested, secund, .64" [1.6 cm] long, successively several flowered inflorescence arising on the top of the leaf with long pedicels and carrying glabrous floral bracts.

"Distinguished by the small horizontal, ovate leaf with an inflorescence borne on top. The raceme is long-pedicellate, the sepals are obtuse, the lobes of the transverse petals ae narrowly triangular and the column protrudes forward bearing the blades of the lip horizontally and from above the middle of the column. The appendix is thick and truncate." Luer 1998

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVI Systematics of Pleurothallis SUBGEN Crocodeilanthe, Rhynchopera and Talpinaria Luer 1998 drawing fide; ; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide

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