Lepanthes fusiformis Luer 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

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

LATER EARLIER

Common Name The Narrowly Ellipsoid Lepanthes [refers to the leaf]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in southern Ecuador at elevations around 2450 to 2900 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with a slender, erect to suberect, weak ramicaul enveloped by 4 to 8, finely long-ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, purple suffused, coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acute, fleshy thickened to terete, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf sometimes with microscopically ciliate margins that blooms in the late summer and earlier fall on a filiform, congested, distichous, lightly flexous, 1.12" [2.8 cm] long, successively several flowered inflorescence arising on the top of the leaf and carrying ciliate to scabrous floral bracts.

"Recognized by the thick, narrowly ovate leaves that are often terete, a congested inflorescence shorter than the leaf, small spiculate-denticulate flowers, transverse petals that vary considerably in size, ovate blades of the lip with ciliate apices and a comparatively large, pubescent appendix that is attached externaly to the sinus, but which protrudes well beyond the sinus." Luer 1996

There are only a few Lepanthes with terete leaves and they are L aciculifolia, L canaliculata, L fusiformis, L gustavoi and L teres.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54:344 1983, 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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