Lepanthes fuertesii Hespenh. & Dod 1990 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

TYPE Drawing by © Hespenheide and Moscosoa 6: 181 Hespenh. & Dod 1990

LATE EARLY

Common Name Fuertes' Lepanthes [Padre Miguel Fuertes Dominican Orchid Explorer early 1900's]

Flower Size .1" [2.5 mm]

Found in Barahona province of the Dominican Republic in wet montane broadleaved forests at elevations of 800 to 1700 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with a slender, erect to ascending ramicaul enveloped by 5 to 7, minutely ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, purple suffused beneath, elliptical-ovate, subacute, broadly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter and spring on an erect, held beneath the leaf, peduncle .16 to .6" [.4 to 1.5 cm] long, rachis congested, distichous, to .28" [7 mm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence with slightly echinate, as long as the pedicel floral bracts.

"Identified by a congested raceme borne beneath the small, ovate leaf, entire, acute sepals, small petals with short lobes with obtuse ends and a lip with lunate blades incomplete below the middle with acute apices. The appendix is stout, ciliate and minutely bilobulate apically." Ackerman 2014

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Moscosoa 6: 179 Hespenh. & Dod 1990 drawing fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014

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