Lepanthes protuberans Luer & P.Jesup 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos by © Alexander Hirtz
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
EARLY 
Common Name The Protruding Lepanthes [refers to the body of the lip]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in southeastern Ecuador at elevations around 1450 to 2500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 5 to 7, ciliate lepanthiform sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, thickly coriaceous, narrowly elliptic, acute, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on a slender, subdense, distichous, to .8" [2 cm] long, successively several flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf and carrying muriculate floral bracts.
"Characterized by the narrow, semiterete leaves and a shorter subdense inflorescence of colorful flowers. The sepals are sharply carinate and spiculate, the laterals being ciliate-spiculate, the petals are large and transverse. The small pubescent blades of the lip are borne above the column by broadly oblong connectives that form a broadly rounded, protuberant body beneath the column." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *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
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