Lepanthes grypha Luer 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by © Andreas Kay and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
and LATE 
EARLIER 
Common Name The Grypha Lepanthes [A mythological creature, half lion, half eagle refers to the appearance of the central apparatus]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in northwestern Ecuador at elevations around 1300 to 2050 meters as a miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with a slender, weak ramicaul enveloped by 9 to 11, microscopically scabrous lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, suberect to spreading, thinly coriaceous, narrowly elliptical-ovate, acute to acuminate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter and late summer and earlier fall on a filiform, very congested, distichous, 1.6" [4 cm] long, successively flowered inflorescence arising on the top of the leaf.
"Recognized by the congested raceme borne on top of the leaf, broad, shortlyacuminate sepals, the laterals denticulate, comparatively large, pubescent petals, flat blades of the lip held over the column and a thick bilobular body with a small, thick appendix protruding from the cleftlike sinus." Luer 1996
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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