TYPE Drawing TYPE DrawingLepanthes odobenella Luer & Hirtz 1986 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by © Alexander Hirtz
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
LATE 
EARLY
Common Name The Little Walrus Lepanthes [refers to the tusk-like lower lobes of the petals]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Napo province of Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1400 to 1800 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 5 to 17, minutely ciliate-scabrous lepanthiform sheaths with dilated long-acuminate ostia carrying a single, apical, erect to suberect, thinly coriaceous, purplish, ovate, acute, acuminate broadly cuneate, rounded to subcordate and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer to early fall on a filiform, congested, .6 to 1.6" [1.5 to 4 cm] long, successively flowered inflorescence arising on the top of the leaf.
"This species was described from a small, cultivated plant just beginning to flower for the first time. Subsequent collections exhibit a larger habit with longer peduncles with congested racemes. The leaf is indeed thin, purplish, more or less crinkly, long acuminate at the apex with the base rounded. The base of the leaf is occasionally subcordate and abruptly contracted into the short petiole. The broadly ovate, minutely denticulae sepals and the petals with the tusk-like, long descending lower lobes are characteristic. The blades of the lip are variable, somteimes covering the column and sometimes more or less surrounding the column. The connectives vary from broad to narrow. The well developed, ovoid, pubescent appendix with a bilobulate apex remains constant in those seen to date. The stigma varies fro apical to subapical." Luer 1996
Synonyms
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 XIV Luer 1996 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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