Lepanthes mastix Luer & Hirtz 1987 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves SERIES Filamentosae

Side View Photos by Arturo Carrillo

TYPE Drawing TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name or Meaning The Whip Lepanthes [refers to the long flexible inflorescence]

Flower Size .2" [5mm]

Found in Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations aound 3100 to 3450 meters as a small sized, cold growing epiphyte with stout, erect ramicauls enveloped by 6 to 13, dark brown, close, hispid, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, suberect, thinly coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acuminate, acute, the base cuneate into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a slender, loose, flexible, lightly flexuous, successively many flowered, to 14" [to 35 cm] long inflorescence.

"This species is capable of producing excessively long racemes, many times longer than the leaf. Often 2, sometime 3, large, dark red flowers are open simultaneously. The sepals are minutely pubescent within. The densely pubescent petals are proportionally very small. The laminae of the lip are oblong and the appendix is short and pubescent," Luer 1996

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana 2: 99 Luer 1987 Drawing fide; 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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