Lepanthes parvula Dressler 1959 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

Photo by © Gerardo Salazar

Common Name The Small Flowered Lepanthes

Flower Size .04” [1 mm]

Found in southern Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador on small mossy trees at elevations around 950 to 1650 meters as super-mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with ascending, erect ramicauls enveloped by 3 to 5 lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, fleshy, intense green above, spotted or totally purple on the back, elliptic-orbicular to ovate, obtuse, apically tridentate, attenuate below into the shortly petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on up to 3, 1/3 as long as the leaf, on top of the leaf, peduncle .08 to .2” [2 to 5 mm] long, thin, purple, rachis subdistichous, congested, successively single, to 5 flowered inflorescence with obliquely infundibuliform, cucullate, lepanthiform floral bracts.

This is the smallest Lepanthes in Mexico

"In its ciliate sepal-margins and general habit, this species resembles the larger Lepanthes schiedei but differs in several characters: the short inflorescence, the much smaller flowers and the more or less papillate petals and lip, which are differently shaped. From Lepanthes papillipetala , this species may be distinguished at once by its ciliate sepals, its less strongly papillate petals, its papillate lip and its smaller flowers." Dressler 1959

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI * Rhodora 61: 15 Dressler 1959; Las Orquideas de El Salvador Hamer vol 3 1981 as L ancyclopetala in error drawing fide; El Genero Lepanthes Sw. En Mexico Salazar and Soto 1996 Photo/drawing fide; Lepanthes de Guatemala Archila 2001 drawing fide; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018

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