Lepanthes orchestris Luer & R.Vásquez 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by Wiel Driessen and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The Dancer Lepanthes [refers to the dainty tailed flowers]
Flower Size .2" [5mm]
Found in northeastern Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia in cloud forests on the eastern slopes of the Andes at elevations aound 1300 to 2250 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 5 to 7, thin, pale, ciliate lepanthiform sheaths with dilated ostia and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, purple suffused below, ovate, subacute, rounded below and contracted into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring and fall on a dense, secund, .8 to 1.4" [2 to 3.5 cm] long including the .2 to .6" [5 to 15 mm] long peduncle, successively single, few flowered inflorescence arising on back of the leaf.
"Vegetatively it is recognized by the thin, pale, lepanthiform sheaths with dilated ostis. The flower sits more or less erect with the long-acuminate apices of the minutely toothed lateral sepals spreading upon the dorsum of the ovate leaf." Luer 1996
Similar to the Ecuadorian L ephalmatrix but this one differs in the larger habit, pendent, elliptical leaves [instead of erect, ovate] and twice as large flowers as L ephalmatrix.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia Vol 54 # 5pg 359 Luer 1983; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes, Lepanthes subgenus Marsipanthes and subgenus Lepanthes of Ecuador Luer 1996 drawing fide; Orchids of Bolivia Vol 1 Vasquez and Ibisch 2000 drawing fide; Orchid Species of Peru Zelenko Bermudez 2009 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXI Luer 2010 drawing fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 86 #2 2017 photo fide;
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