Lepanthes simplex Hespenh. 1968 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996

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

Common Name The Insignificant Lepanthes

Flower Size .1" [2.5 mm]

Found in Trelawny parish of Jamaica on trees near the tops of limestone hills in seasonally dry, scrubby forests at elevations of 600 to 700 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 4 to 6 microscopically scabrous lepathiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, thickly coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later summer on an erect, on top of the leaf, peduncle filiform, .08 to .12" [2 to 3 mm] long, rachis to [.48" [1.2 cm] long, congested, distichous, successively single, sevedral flowered inflorescence with echinate, longer than the pedicel floral bracts.

Recognized by the thick coriaceous, elliptical leaf with short congested racemes of minute flowers with ovate, acute sepals, laterals single veined, minute auriculate petals and a minute entire, transversely oblong lip.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014 drawing fide;

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