Lepanthes tentaculata Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Jean Marc Pallandre
Photo courtesy of Walter Teague
TYPE by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Tentacled Lepanthes
Flower Size 1/10" [3mm]
Found in Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations of 750 meters as a miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte with erect to suberect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 7 to 9 shortly pubescent, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, spreading, thinly coriaceous, green with brownish or purplish reticulation, suborbicular, undulate, apically rounded leaf with the base broadly cordate, that blooms in the winter on a congested, distichous, successively several flowered, 1/2" [1.1 cm] long, racemose inflorescence that arises on top of the leaf.
Often found in association and very similar with L calodictyon but can be easily distinguished by the the suborbicular, reticulated leaves, the long, filiform processes of the petals and the tiny heart-shaped lip beneath the middle of the column." Luer 1996.
Similar to the wideranging L calodictyon and sufficiently different from the following to be separate species L barbelifera, L. bibarbullata Luer, L microcalodictyon, L pantominia, L pretiosa, L salatrix L. tortuosa Luer & Hirtz, L volador and the recently described species L. kayii L. Baquero 2018.
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; Orchid Digest Vol 63 #3 1999 photo fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2001 drawing ok; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 81 #12 2012 photo fide; Lankesteriana 18: 183 Baquero & J S Moreno 2018 photo fide
Checked type drawing W3Tropicos seems ok
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
