Lepanthes lloensis Luer 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

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

AND AGAIN EARLIER

Common Name The Lloa Lepanthes [A Town near Quito in Ecuador]

Flower Size .32" [8 mm]

Found in Ecuador at elevations around 2650 to 3100 meters as a small sized, cold growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 8 to 18, minutely ciliate-scabrous lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, ovate-oblong, acute, acuminate, rounded to lightly cordate and abruptly contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring and again in the earlier fall on a filiform, extremely congested, distichous, 2" [5 cm] long, successively many flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.

"Identified by the large habit, very congested raceme shorter than the acuminate leaf, broad sepals, the laterals deeply connate with distant, obtuse apices, petals with falcate lower lobes and sometimes with an attempt to make the upper lobes falcate as well and convex blades of the lip with a tiny filamentaceous appendix." Luer 1996

Similar to L magnifica but it has sepals that are white with the apices produced into short tails, the lateral sepals are shortly pubescent, the petals are transversely oblong and the pubescent appendix is terminated by a diverging pair of lobules. L chrysina has glabrous petals and lip as well as an oblong, membraneous appendix with an apical gland that has a pair of minute finger-like processes.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54:350 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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