Lepanthes rudicula Luer & Hirtz 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
LATER
EARLY
Common Name The Small Spatula Lepanthes [refers to the small paddle-like leaves]
Flower Size .08" [2 mm]
Found in Tungurahua, Napo and Morona-Santiago provinces of Ecuador at elevations around 950 to 1500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 4 to 8, microscopically scabrous lepanthiform sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, broadly elliptical to suborbicular, obtuse, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later summer and early fall on a filiform, very congested, distichous, to .68 to .72" [1.7 to 1.9 cm] long, successively many flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf with scabrous floral bracts.
"Florally it is similar to the larger, elliptical leaves L cercion from Colombia. L rudicula is distinguished by the small suborbicular leaves, a short, congested, distichous raceme, ovate sepals, the laterals deeply connate, large petals longer than the sepals, narrow, pubescent blades of the lip on the margins of the connectives and a small, oblong appendix on the external surface of the bodyt at the base." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Luer 1996 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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