Lepanthes hystrix Luer & Hirtz 1984 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996

Side View of Flower

Photos by Bruno Larsen © and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website

TYPE Drawing

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

Common Name The Porcupine Lepanthes [refers to the prickly exterior of the flower]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in northwestern Ecuador at elevations around 2000 to 2400 meters as a miniature to small sized, cold growing epiphyte with an erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by 7 to 12, microscopically ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, acuminate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall and winter on 2 to 4, filiform, loose, lightly flexuous, to 1.4" [3.5 cm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.

"Characterized by the yellow, long-spiculate flowers borne successively in a loose raceme shorter than the narrow leaf. The lateral sepals are sharply folded inward as seen in L complicata. The petals are transversely narrowly oblong. The blades of the lip are narrowly ovate and the appendix is reduced to a minute, pubescent lobule." Luer 1996

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *

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