Lepanthes impotens Luer & R.Escobar 1997 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Esteban Dominguez Vargas and his Flickr Orchid Photo Webpage
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Webpage
LATER
Common Name The Weak Lepanthes [refers to the plant habit]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Risaralda department of Colombia at elevations around 2000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with very slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 12 to 13, microscopically scabrous lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, horizontal, purple, thinly coriaceous, finely pubescent, ovate, acute, long-acuminate, broadly rounded to broadly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later spring on a, filiform, congested, subsecund, longer than the leaf, .4 to .52" [1 to 1.3 cm] long including the .2" [5 mm] long peduncle, successively single, several flowered inflorescence arising on top of the leaf and has lightly muriculate floral bracts.
"Vegetatively this weak, little species is similar to several other species with very slender ramicauls with tightly applied, non-dilated, lepanthiform sheaths, and with small, horizontal leaves with a long-acuminate apex as long as the blade. The leaf is finely and sparsely pubescent. Plants often consist of only one ramicaul with leaf. The sepals and petals are practically identical to those of the Ecuadorian L. odobenella Luer & Hirtz, but vegetatively the latter is considerably larger and stronger. The blades of the lip of the two species are similar, but the appendix of the latter is well-deveioped and relatively large with a hinge, margins and a central cavity. The appendix of L. impotens is reduced to a ciliate margin of the body of the lip." Luer & Escobar 1997
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Orquideologia Vol 20 #3 pg 299 Luer & Escobar 1997 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII Luer 2012 drawing fide; Orchids A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 drawing/photo fide;
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