Lepanthes terpsichore Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by Arturo Carrilo ©
Photo by © Alexander Hirtz
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name Terpischore's Lepanthes [greek mythological muse of music and dancing]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in El Oro province of Ecuador at elevations around 1850 to 2400 meters as a miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with a slender, suberect ramicaul enveloped by 8 to 11, lepanthiform sheaths with markedly ciliated ostia carrying a single, apical, purple suffused, spreading, thickly coriaceous, elliptic-ovate, acute, wide expanded, sulcate medially with both halves convex, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on a slender, congested, secund, to 2" [to 5 cm] long, successively many flowered inflorescence arising on the top side of the leaf within the sulcus.
"Similar in habit to L manabina and its relatives with the thick, heavy, dark green, mpre or less pendent leaves. The leaves are sulcate centrally wherein lines the raceme with its flower. The denticulate sepals are acuminate, the upper lobes of the petals are oblong, the lower lobes are triangular and the blades of the lip are narrowly oblong with incurved apices. Two minute, pubescent nodules are at the base of the tiny triangular 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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