Lepanthes mollis Luer 2002 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996
Photos by © Bogarin, Used under permission of Epidendra Website CR
TYPE Drawing by © Luer & Cloes and Miscellaneous new Species in the Pleurothallidinae Selbyana Vol 23 # 2 pg 17 Luer 2002
Common Name The Soft Lepanthes
Flower Size .1" [2mm]
Found in Chiriqui department of Panama in wet forests at elevations around 1500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphtye with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 10 to 11 scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths with dilated, long-acuminate ostia and carrying a single erect to suberect, thin, subcoriaceous, ovate-elliptical, acute, acuminate, cuneate-rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on a filiform peduncle, .36 to .8" [.9 to 2 cm] long, arising on top of the leaf, rachis congested, distichous, to .4" [1 cm] long, successively single, many flowered inflorescence with minutely muriculate floral bracts.
"Distinguished by the congested raceme shorter than the soft, elliptical, acuminate leaf upon which it is borne. The sepals are obtuse, the lobes of the petals are acute and the blades of the lip are ovate and borne by broad connectives. The appendix is minute, ovoid and biglandular." Luer 2002
SynonymsReferences W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR ; * Selbyana 23: 15. Luer 2002 drawing fide
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