Lepanthes mixe Salazar & Soto Arenas 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

TYPE Drawing

Photo by © Gerardo Salazar/TYPE Drawing by R Jimenez and El Genero Lepanthes Sw. En Mexico Salazar and Soto 1996

LATER

Common Name The Mixe Lepanthes [An Ethnic group of southern Mexico that inhabit the same area as the orchid]

Flower Size .2” [5 mm]

Found in Oaxaca state of Mexico within perrenial, montane jungle forests at elevations around 2000 meters as mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with ascending to arcuate ramicauls enveloped by 4 to 7 lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, coriaceous, slightly fleshy and somewhat rigid, narrowly elliptic-lanceolate, acute, slightly convex, dark green to almost gray on top, completely flushed with purple beneath, apically tridentate leaf that blooms in the later spring on a single, always less than 1/2 the leaf in length, mostly on the back side of the leaf, peduncle thin, .4 to .6” [1 to 1.5 cm] long, single tubular bracted, rachis slightly flexuous, very short, to .64” [1.6 cm] long overall, successively 1 at a time, 2 to 5 flowered inflorescence with shortly spaced, infundibuliform, laterally compressed, acute floral bracts.

"This species is superficially similar to L calopetala by virtue of the lanceolate leaves and the petals witha wide apicule and the lobes somewhat divergent forming a "boomerang". But the new species is distinguished by the proportionally shorter, shortly acuminate sepals without papilose margins, the laterals connate for more than a third of their length, the petals conspicouly widened to the apex of the upper lobe, the connecitives of the lip shorter and wider and the smaller appendix with shorter hairs. also the plants are much more compact. The new species is also similar to L brachystele but can be easily separated by the well developed veins of the sheaths that are irregularily muricate, the column notably shorter than the laminae of the lip and differences in the shape of the petals." Salazar & Soto 1996

The photo above is the type photo so it is absolutely correct.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * El Genero Lepanthes Sw. En Mexico Salazar and Soto 1996 Photo/drawing fide;

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