Lepanthes mephistopheles Luer & Hirtz 1987 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Alexander Hirtz and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Photo by © Wolfgang Renner and his Orchid Website
TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Devilish Lepanthes [Refers to the pair of erect, red upper lobules of the petals reminiscent of a pair of horns]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Napo province of Ecuador at elevations around 1800 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with very slender, suberect ramicauls enveloped by 7 to 11, tight-fitting lepanthiform sheaths with dilated shortly ciliate ostia and carrying a single, apical, suberect to spreading, thinly coriaceous, purple beneath, elliptical-ovate, obtuse, abruptly acuminate, the rounded base contracted below into a petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a congested, secund, filiform, 1" [2.5 cm] long, successively flowered, racemose inflorescence arising on the top surface of the leaf.
"Distinguished by a frequent succession of colorful flowers and is quite floriferous with the inflorescence on top of the leaf with an erect pair of large red, pointed petals and can only be confused with L uropetala which is a larger, less floriferous species with a completely different complicated appendix." 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; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2001 drawing/photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
Checked Luer OK
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