Lepanthes sororcula Luer & Hirtz 1987 SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Mucronatae Luer 1996

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

LATE EARLY

Common Name The Little Sister Lepanthes [refers to the similarities to L mucronata]

Flower Size .08" [2 mm]

Found in El Oro province of Ecuador at elevations around 950 to 1000 meters as a miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte with a suberect, slender ramicaul enveloped by 9 to 11, close fitting, lepanthiform sheaths with minutely ciliate ostia carrying a single, apical, suberect to horizontal , thinly coriaceous, reticulate, narrowly ovate, acute, cuneate and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early spring on a filiform, congested, distichous, .36 to .84" [9 to 2.1 cm] long, successively several flowered inflorescence arising on top of the leaf.

"The narrowly ovate leaves are held horizontally by weak stems and the flowers are produced in congested racemes on top of the leaf. There can be, as in L mucronata, 2 simultaneously occuring racemes one on top of the other. The apices of the petals are not truncate in L sororcula also the blades of the lip are more or less fleshy and held to either side of the column." Ler 1996

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana 2: 144 Luer & Hirtz 1987 Drawing fide; 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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