Lepanthes meniscophora Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © John Hill and the J & L Orchid Website
TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Meniscus-Bearing Lepanthes [Refers to the petals]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in northwestern Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 2100 to 2500 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 8 to 10 lepanthiform sheaths with oblique, dilated, ciliate, long-acumiante ostia and carrying a single, apical, spreading, coriaceous, suffused with purple, ovate, acute, lightly acuminate, cuneate and narrowing below into a petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall and winter on a subdense, secund, filiform, 1" [2.5 cm] long, successively several flowered, racemose inflorescence arising on the top surface of the purplish leaf.
"Separated by the secund inflorescence arising on top of the purplish leaf with denticulate, shortly acuminate, crescent-shaped sepals. The petals are crescent shaped. Similar petals are seen in the Colombian L antennifera and the Bolivian Lepanthes barbatula ." Luer 1996
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes, Lepanthes subgenus Marsipanthes and subgenus Lepanthes of Ecuador Luer 1996 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XV Systematics of Trichosalpinx Luer 1997; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2001 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide; Orchid Digest Vol 83 #3 2019 photo fide;
Checked Luer OK
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