Lepanthes pelvis Pupulin & D.Jiménez 2009
Photos by © Daniel Jimenez
TYPE Drawing by © Franco Pupulin & Daniel Jimenez and Orchid Digest Vol 73 142 2009
Common Name or Meaning The Pelvis Lepanthes [An allusion to the pelvis shaped lip when flattened]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Costa Rica in montane rain forests at elevations around 2100 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with patent to arching, becoming pendant with age, slender ramicauls enveloped by 4 to 9, tight fitting, leapnthiform sheaths with dilate, ovate-acuminate ostia and carrying a single, apical, subcoriaceous, elliptic to elliptic-lanceolate, acute to shortly acuminate, minutely bilobed, abaxially mucronate, gradually rounded and contracted below into the inconspicuous, petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on a congested, distichous, filiform, to .6" [1.5 cm] long, racemose, successively few flowered inflorescence holding the flower on top of the leaf and has triangular, ovate, acute, amplectant floral bracts.
" Lepanthes pelvis has no close relatives in Costa Rica and Central America. Its affinities are with mainly Andean species, among which are L. cassidea, L. elephantina , L. flexuosa , and L. satyrica , characterized by a deeply concave dorsal sepal and somewhat ringent flowers. It is most similar to L. satyrica, with which it shares the short inflorescence borne on top of the leaf and the general structure of the lip, with long connectives that bear the narrow blades well above the column, and the long process that descends from the body, with an apical appendix. However, L. pelvis may be distinguished from L. satyrica by the green, elliptic leaves, broader than .48" [1.2 cm] (vs. purple-striped, very narrowly ovate, up to .2" [5 mm] wide), the winged, denticulate ovary (vs. round, glabrous), the acuminate sepals (vs. obtuse, the lateral sepals connate into a shortly bifid synsepal), distinctly costate and cristate-ciliate along the nerves (vs. glabrous), and the petals with subequal lobes (vs. the lower lobe longer, narrowly linear-triangular) and without an apiculum on the margin between the lobes (present in L. satyrica)." Jimenez & Pupulin 2009
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Orchid Digest Vol 73 142 2009 drawing/photo fide; Lankestriana 11(3): 185-205 Bogarin 2011 Photo fide
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