Lepanthes mystax Luer & R.Escobar 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by © Bogarin & Karremans/TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer Used under permission of Epidendra Website CR
Photo by Fabian A. Michelangeli
LATE
EARLY
Common Name The Mustache Lepanthes
Flower Size .2" [5mm]
Found in Costa Rica in cloud forests at elevations around 1800 to 3000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphtye with slender, erect, arching ramicauls enveloped completely by 7 to 9, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, ovate, acuminate, rounded below and contracted into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late spring summer and early fall on a congested, distichous, successively single several flowered, to .35" [9 mm], racemose inflorescence arising from behind the leaf.
"This species with round, shortly acuminate leaves is remarkable for the small flowers with seemingly oversized petals and a lip with diverging, long cilate blades. The straight, purple hairs point diagonally inward, the longest towards teh apex, together forming a screen-like cover for the column. The stigma is transversely bilobed with the lobes projecting laterally, reminiscent of the genus Stelis." Luer 1983
Similar in the modified rostellar flap of L surrogata and L necopina
SynonymsReferences W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR ; * Phytologia 54:355 Luer 1983 Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003; Orchids of Costa Rica Vol 1 Morales 2009 photo fide; Vanishing Beauty; Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 2 Lacaena to Pteroglossa Pupulin 2020 photo fide;
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