Lepanthes wrightii Rchb.f. 1865 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

Photo by © Julio Larramendi

Common Name Wright's Lepanthes [American Botanist 1800's]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in northeastern Cuba as a mini-miniature sized, caespitose, warm to cool growing epiphyte with an erect ramicaul enveloped by to 6, black, horn-shaped, acute lepanthiform sheaths with more or less sparsely ciliate ostia and carrying a single, apical, elliptic to ovate, coriaceous, acute, tridenticulate, not marginate, entire to sparsely short ciliate, subsessile base leaf that blooms at any time of the year on a fascile of capillary, distally distichously, laxly successivvley several, to 20 flowered inflorescence with somewhat inflated, mucronate, sparsely ciliate, as long as the ovary floral bracts and carrying flowers that open yellow and become reddish with age.

Characterized by the small habit with elliptical leaves, an elongate peduncle about as long as the leaf and carrying a a successively many flowered raceme that eventually exceed the peduncle in length. The sepals are acue and the transverse petals are oblong with equal lobes. The lip has been compared to a baseball mitt. The lobes are broadly renoiform without forming blades. The body is broad and concave with a small appendix.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Orchidaceae Antillanae Nir 2000; The Orchids of Cuba Llamacho and Larramendi 2005 photo fide; Orchid Flora of the Greater Antilles Ackerman 2014

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