Lepanthes ricina Luer & Dalström 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes Novon 1993

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

EARLY

Common Name The Veiled Lepanthes [refers to the curtain like covering over the column]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Imbabura province of Ecuador at elevations around 1200 meters as a small sized, warm growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 14 to 20, long-ciliate lepanthiform sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptic to obovate, subacute to abruptly acuminate, broadly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on a slender, very congested, distichous, to 1.4" [3.5 cm] long, successively many flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.

"Distinguished by the tall ramicauls and an obovate, abruptly acuminate leaf. The congested raceme is borne behind the leaf. The sepals are smooth, broad and lightly acuminate, the petals are transversely oblong. Most unusual is the transparent veil that descernds form the inner margins of the thisk, lunate blades of the lip to cover the thick 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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