Lepanthes vivipara Salazar & Soto Arenas 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo/TYPE Drawing by © Miguel Soto
LATE
Common Name The Snake-Like Lepanthes [refers to the keikis produced at the apex of the ramicauls]
Flower Size .16” [4 mm]
Found only in Chiapas state of Mexico and Guatemala on mossy branches within cloud forests at elevations around 1900 to 2200 meters as mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with ascending to prostrate, erect, or arcuate ramicauls enveloped by 4 to 6 lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, coriaceous-fleshy, ovate-elliptic, acute-acuminate, slightly convex, intense green, apically tridentate leaf, canaliculate and twisted below into the shortly petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late spring on 1 to 2, only one per bloom season, 1/4 to 1/3 the leaf in length, on either side of the leaf, peduncle filiform, terete or somewhat compressed, .24 to .34” [6 to 9 mm] long, single tubular bracted near the middle, rachis subdistichous, somewhat flexuous, subcongested, .4 to .6” [1 to 1.5 mm] long overall, successively 1 at a time, 3 to 7 flowered inflorescence with obliquely infundibular, obtuse, lepanthiform floral bracts.
"The habit of this species is unique in Mexico in producing with frequency plantlets from the area where the inflorescence arises. The ramicauls that emerge are long and thin but the weight of the new growth lies prostrate and grows very slowly, somewhat of a clonal expansion. The flowers are similar to L stenophylla and its allies. The differences are few in all but the vegetative habit of this species is strikingly different from the others which mostly exhibit caespitose plants. The flowers have relatively large petals and the laminae of the lip are slightly longer that the column with the stigma postitioned slightly subapically. The appendix is split in two as in both L stenophylla and L tecpanica." Salazar & Soto 1996
The photo above is the type photo so it is absolutely correct.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI * El Genero Lepanthes Sw. En Mexico Salazar and Soto 1996 Photo/drawing fide; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018
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