Lepanthes thoracica Luer & Hirtz 2009 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

Photo by © Jean Marc Pallandre

Common Name The Little Thorax Lepanthes [refers to the racemose that looks like a rib cage]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Esmeraldas province of Ecuador at elevations around 800 meters as a miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 6 to 7, minutely ciliate lepanthiform sheaths with oblique long-attenuate ostia carrying a single, apical, erect, rigid, narrowly linear, acute, channeled, contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect, congested, to .8" [ to 2 cm] long, successively flowered inflorescence with long pedicels arising frrom the base of the leaf.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Luer 2009 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide

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