Lepanthes suavium Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

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

LATE EARLY

Common Name The Kissing Lepanthes [refers to the apposition of two parts of the appendix]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in the Cordillera del Condor of Zamora Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1000 to 1300 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 5 to 8, ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths with long-acumiante ostia carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, purple suffused beneath, ovate, acuminate to acute, rounded to broadly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late fall and early winter on a slender, very crowded, distichous, .92 to 1.12" [2.3 to 2.8 cm] long, successively many flowered inflorescence arising on the back side of the leaf.

"Although not particularily remarkable in the appearance of the habit or inflorescence with small flowers on a congested raceme behind an ovate, acuminate leaf, the appendix is most unusual. It is pubescent and originates from the protuberant margin of the body of the lip. On top of the margin a cavity continues forward as a sulcus onto the apendix with 2 ciliate margins. It is terminated by a decurved, pedunculate lobule that is in apposition witha long-ciliate, inferior portion of the appendix." Luer 1996

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; 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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