Lepanthes pleurorachis Luer 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996
Photo by © Andreas Kaye and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Photo by J S Moreno © and The Harvard Papers in Botany, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2020, pp. 99–110 Website
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer © and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name The Ribbed Rachis Lepanthes [refers to the inflorescence]
Flower Size .08" [2 mm]
Found in Colombia and Ecuador in cold cloud forests at elevations around 1000 to 1650 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with an erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by 6 to 8, minutely scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect to suberect, coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acuminate to acute, obtuse to rounded below into the contracted, petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on a slender, flexuous, loose, to .44" [1.1 cm] long including the .24" [6 mm] long, successively single, few flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.
"Similar to L columbar, L viahoensis, L petalopterix and L anchicayae, but easily distinguished by the dense, distichous, comb-like racemes borne behind a small, narrowly ovate leaf carrying minute flowers with the three sepals similar, ellitical and essentially free: the transverse petals are acute, the upper lobe inconstantly bearing a small angle on the inner edge of the uper lobe: and a cordate, bladless lip shallowly retuse at the rounded apex with a minute apiculum." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54: 363 Luer 1983; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes, Lepanthes subgenus Marsipanthes and subgenus Lepanthes of Ecuador Luer 1996 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII Luer 2012 drawing fide; Orchids, A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 drawing fide; Orquideas de Farallones de Cali Galindo-Tarazona, Haelterman, Zuluaga Trochez and Sebastian Moreno 2020 photo fide
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