Lepanthes tristis Bogarín & Pupulin 2012 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photos/TYPE Drawing by © Diego Bogarin and Orch. Digest 76(1): 26 Bogarin and Pupulin 2012
EARLY 
Common Name The Sad Lepanthes [refers to weak drooping stems]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Costa Rica in premontane wet forests on the Caribbean slopes at elevations around 1468 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with drooping, weak, slender ramicauls enveloped completely by 8 to 12, minutely scabrous, lepanthiform sheaths with acuminate ostia and carrying a single, apical, greyish green, purple suffused beneath, coriaceous, linear, very fleshy, revolute-replicate margins, minutely tridenticulate apicaly, narrowly cuneate below into the indistinct petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on a filiform, loose, distichous, fractiflex, .68 to .84" [1.7 to 2.1 cm] long including the .4 to .52 ” [1 to 1.3 cm] long peduncle, successively single, few flowered inflorescence arising on the top of the leaf with a small tubular sheath in the middle and infundibuliform, glabrous floral bracts.
"Vegetatively, this species with gray-green leaves with revolute-replicate margins is similar to Lepanthes lindleyana. The species is easily distinguished by the pendent plants (up to 4.8" [ 12 cm] tall), with linear leaves (vs. ovate). The flowers are smaller with acute, minutely ciliate sepals and petals (vs. obtuse, ciliate). The sepals are concave (vs. convex) and whitish-yellowish (vs. reddish-brown), and the petals are oblong, acute (vs. ovate, obtuse), yellow, edged in red (vs. red to orange)." Bogarin and Pupulin
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Orch. Digest 76(1): 26 Bogarin and Pupulin 2012 drawing fide; Vanishing Beauty, Native Costa Rican Orchids Vol 2 Lacaena to Pteroglossa Pupulin 2020 photo fide
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