Lepanthes ruthiana Luer & L.Jost 1999 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by Lou Jost/TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and Epidendra Orchid Website
LATER 
Common Name Ruth's Lepanthes [American Wife of Birder current]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Morona-Santiago prvince of Ecuador at elevations around 1500 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing, caepitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 12 to 13, slender, acuminate, glabrous lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, broadly elliptical, abruptly acuminate, broadly subcordate, abruptly contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later winter on a slender, arising behind the leaf, congested, 1.2" [3 cm] long, successively single, many flowered inflorescence with an acuminate, shorter than the pedicel floral bract.
"Characterized by the broad leaves, abruptly acuminate and subcordate st the base enveloped basally bt glabrous sheaths on an erect ramicaul. The flower is borne in a congested raceme behind the leaf, The sepasl are very broad and obtuse and the petals are pubescent and bilobed. The lip is most distinctive with the nearly conduplicate blades with recurved bases covering the column. The body is broad with an oblong, pubescent appendix." Luer 1999
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVIII Systematics of Pleurothallis subsection Antenniferae, Longiracemosae, Macrophyllae-Racemosae and Subgenera Pseudsostelis and Acuminata Luer 1999drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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