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

TYPE Drawing by © Hespenheide and Moscosoa 6: 185 Hespenh. & Dod 1990

Common Name Hughson's Lepanthes [American orchid afficianado in Dominican Republic 1900's]

Flower Size .06" [1.5 mm]

Found in the Sierra de Neiba of Independencia Province of the Dominican Republic in wet montane broadleaved forests at elevations around 1650 to 1700 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 4 to 6, microscopically scabrous lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, slightly convex, elliptical-ovate, subacute to obtuse, broadly cuneate below into the shortly petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on an erect, held beneath the leaf, peduncle .28 to .52" [.7 to 1.2 cm] long, rachis congested, distichous, to .24" [6 mm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence with oblique, slightly echinate, as long as to slightly shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.

"Identified by a small habit with a short, congested raceme borne beneath the ovate leaf, entire, narrowly triangular, acute sepals, transverse, oblong petals and a small lip with broadly lunate lobes with only faintly formed blades below the middle. The portions of the lobes above the incomplete blades curve beneath the apex of the column. The small, triangular appendix is sits on the obtuse sinus." Ackerman 2014

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Moscosoa 6: 184 Hespenh. & Dod 1990 drawing fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014

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