Lepanthes pictilis Luer & Hirtz 2009 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and Selbyana 30: 12 Luer & Escobar 2009

Common Name The Painted Lepanthes [refers to the colorful flowers]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Carchi province of Ecuador at elevations around 1800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with erect, relatively stout ramicauls enveloped by 8 to 10, close, minutely scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths with oblique dilated ostia and carrying a single, apical, coriaceous, erect, elliptical-oblong, acute, slightly acuminate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect, borne behind the leaf, peduncle .6" [1.5 cm] long, rachis 1.4" [3.5 cm] long, loose, successively single, few flowered inflorescence with as long as the pedicel floral bracts.

"This species, apparently endemic on the eastern slopes of central Ecuador, is allied to Lepanthes jamesonii that occurs on both sides of the Andes of northern Ecuador. Their habits are similar with a loose raceme about as long as the leaf and borne behind it. The sepals are broader in L. pictilis and the single-veined lateral sepals are ciliate. The petals are also broader, but the blades of the lip are narrowly oblong with uncinate tips. The connectives are cuneate into a broad body with a protruding sinus and a minute, bifid appendix." Luer & Hirtz 2009

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Selbyana 30: 12 Luer & Escobar 2009 Drawing fide; Orchids A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 photo fide;

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