Lepanthes vespa Luer & R.Vásquez 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Website

LATER

Common Name The Wasp Like Lepanthes [refers to column shape]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Bolivia in cloud forests at elevations around 2300 to 2500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped completely by 4 to 7, close, minutely ciliate lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, broadly elliptical, obtuse, broadly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later spring and summer on a, weak, loose, lightly flexuous, to 2” [5 cm] long including the peduncle, successively single, several flowered inflorescence arising on top of the leaf with muricate floral bracts.

Distinguished by the extremely slender shaft of the column supporting the oversized anther, stigma and the surrounding lip. L pilosa has a similar characteristic column but L vespa has flowers with acuminate apices to the sepals without caudae and the long-ciliate margins are only on the lateral sepals.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54: 371 Luer 1983; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXI Luer 2010 drawing fide;

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