Lepanthes janus Luer & R.Escobar 1985 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

Photos by © Rodrigo Escobar/Carl Luer & Missouri Botanical Garden

Common Name The Janus Lepanthes [refers to the roman god Janus, represented by two faces and refering to the 2 sympatric forms of the species]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Norte de Santander department of Colombia in cloud forests as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte at elevations around 2500 meters with slender ramcauls enveloped by 3 to 5 ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, obtuse, cuneate at the base into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on an erect, flexuous, flexible, 3.2" [8 cm] long, loose, successively few flowered, racemose inflorescence holding the flowers well above the leaf

There are 2 distinct flower forms of this species, one illustrated here in the photo is the small sepaled one with the apice of the lip being as long as the bottom of the sepals and the large sepaled one that is not represented here, with the apice of the lip much shorter than the bottom of the sepals.

Luer states in Icones XXXII that this species is a synonym of L norae but I just don't see it. The Appendix to the two species is so different, I can't see how they can be the same so I have left them separate, therefore the previous paragraph is moot.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * AOS Bulletin Vol 54 No 6 1985 drawing/photo fide; Native Colombian Orchids vol 5 1994 COS photo as L cymbium fide; Native Colombian Orchids VOl 5 COS 1994 photo fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII Luer 2012 as L norae drawing fide; Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 as L norae drawing/photo fide;

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