Lepanthes thylax Luer & Hirtz 1987 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Lisa Thoerle
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
Common Name The Sack Lepanthes [refers to the appendix]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in eastern Ecuador at elevations around 850 to 1550 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped by 6 to 9, minutely ciliate lepanthiform sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, purple beneath, ovate, margined, subacute to obtuse, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring, summer and fall on an congested, to .16 to .4" [.4 to 1 cm] long, successively few flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.
"Identified by the ovate leaves, each bearing on the purple undersurface one to two colorful flower nearly as large as the leaf itself. The sepals are long acuminate, the petals are falcate and the blades of the lip are oblong. The appendix is a minute, membraneous, pubescent, oblong, sac-like structure attached to the external surface of the body of the lip. The opening to the sac protruding forward below the sinus but still a considerable distance from the stigma." Luer 1996
Synonyms Lepanthes nambijae Luer & Hirtz 1987
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana 2: 45 Luer & Hirtz 1987 Drawing fide Lindleyana 2: 138. Luer 1987 as L nambijae 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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