Lepanthes mendozae Luer & D'Aless. 1998 SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Elongatae 1993
Photo by © Lisa Thoerle
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
LATE EARLY
Common Name Mendoza's Lepanthes [Ecuadorian Orchid Enthusiast current]
Flower Size .4" [1 cm]
Found in Zamora Chinchipe province of Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 5 to 7, long-ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, broadly elliptical to suborbicular, obtuse to rounded, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on a filiform, flexuous, distichous, .6" [1.5 cm] long, successively single, several flowered inflorescence with as long as the pedicel floral bract.
"Closely related to L ictalurus but distinguished by the smaller habit, larger flower, deeply connate sepals, deeply concave synsepal and shorter tails of the totally glabrous blades of the lip. Both psecies have fringed sepals, long-cilaite petals witha minute upper lobe and a long-attenuate lower lobe, more or less oblong blades of the lip with narrow, apical appendages, and a long, slender column with the petals connate near the basal quarter and the lip connate near the middle." Luer 1998
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVII Systematics of Pleurothallis Section Abortivae, Truncatae, Subsection Acroniae, Subgenera Dracontia and Uncifera Luer 1998 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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