Lepanthes mariposa Luer1984 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by © Bogarin, Used under permission of the Epidendra Website CR
Photo by © Daniel Jimenenz
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer and Epidendra Website CR
LATER 
Common Name The Butterfly Lepanthes
Flower Size .1" [2mm]
Found in Costa Rica and Panama in wet montane forests in scrubby trees at elevations around 1300 to 1500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, colol growing epiphtye with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 5, microscopically pubescent lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thickly coriaceous, elliptic, obtuse, emarginate with an abaxal apicule, the cuneate base contracted into the short petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later fall on a filiform peduncle .08 to .16" [2 to 4 mm] long, on top of the leaf, congested, disitchous, secund, .15 to .18" [3 to 4 mm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence with triangular, acute, amplectent floral bracts.
" This floriferous little species with short racemes on top of the little ovate leaf is easily recognized by the large pair of petals that spread like the wings of a butterfly to either side of the lip and column." Luer 1987
SynonymsReferences W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR CHECKED Type OK; * Phytologia 55: 187. 1984drawing fide; Orchids Travel By Air A Pictoral Safari Mulder, Mulder-Roelfsema and Schuiteman 1990 photo fide; Orchid Digest Vol 73 #3 2009 drawing/photo fide; Lankestriana 11(3): 185-205 Bogarin 2011 Photo fide;
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