Lepanthes iricolor Luer 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by © Eerika Schulz and her Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name The Rainbow Colored Lepanthes [refers to the flower colors]
Flower Size .08" [2 mm]
Found in Napo province of Ecuador at elevations around 600 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 4 to 6, ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, purple reticulate, ovate, subacute, broadly cuneate and contracted below into the twisted petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on a filiform, congested, distichous, .24" [ 6 mm] long, successively flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.
"Found in the eastern lowlands as a color variable orchid but otherwise the species is distinguished by the tiny habit, short, congested inflorescence with ovate, denticulate sepals that are connate only at the base and comparatively large transverse petals and a lip with ovate blades and a small triangular appendix." Luer 1996
Synonyms
ReferencesW3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54:349 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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