Lepanthes veleziana Stimson 1970 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Alex Sirota
Collection sheet by © Stimson and The Kew Herbaium
Common Name or Meaning Velez' Lepanthes
Flower Size .1" [2.5mm]
Found only in Puerto Rico in wet montane forests at elevations of 250 to 1300 meters as a miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte or lithophyte with a slender, erect ramicaul enveloped basally by 5 to 13 lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, ovate to ovate-lanceolate, minutely tridenticulate apically leaf that blooms at most any time of the year on a terminal, 1 to few, fasciculate, fractiflex, distichous, .2 to .8" [5 to 20 mm] long, successively single many flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.
"Distinguished by the short congested raceme borne beneath the ovate leaf. The sepals are acute with the laterals semiconnate. The petals are similar to L selenipetala with diverging lobes, but with the tips of the lobes rounded. The blades of the lip are ovate with narrow the narrow apices incurved around the apex. The appendix is narrowly oblong and glabous." Ackerman 2014
Synonyms Lepanthes veleziana var. retusicolumna Stimson 1969 publ. 1970
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; An Orchid Flora Of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Ackerman 1995 drawing fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014
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