Lepanthes stegastes Luer & Hirtz 1987 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Andreas Kay and his Flickr Orchid Photo Herbaria Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
LATE 
Common Name The Covered Lepanthes [refers to the protected inflorescence within the horizontal convex leaves]
Flower Size .08" [2 mm]
Found in Napo province of Ecuador at elevations around 1200 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 7 to 8, microscopically scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths carrying a single, apical, more or less horizontal, convex, coriaceous, suborbicular, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter on 1 to 2, held within the cavity of the underside of the leaf, peduncle filiform, .08 to .12" [2 to 3 mm] long, rachis very congested, distichous, .16" [4 mm] long, successively several flowered inflorescence with as long as to just shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.
"Distinguished by the very small size, very small, convex, orbicular leaves that are held horizontally. The minute flowers are borne within the cavity beaneath the leaf. The most remarkable feature is the concave, long-pubescent appendix of the lip." Luer 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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