Lepanthes zelenkoi Luer & Hirtz 2009 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves Luer 1986 SERIES Breves Luer 1996

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and Selbyana 30: 15 Luer & Escobar 2009

Common Name Zelenko's Lepanthes [American Co-collector of species]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Canar province of Ecuador at elevations around 3000 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 6 to 11 lepanthiform sheaths with dilated, ciliate ostia and carrying a single, apical, coriaceous, erect, narrowly elliptical, acute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect,from beneath the leaf, peduncle filiform, .2" [.5 cm] long, rachis 1" [2.5 cm] long, loose, successively single, few flowered inflorescence with shorter than the pedicel floral bracts.

"This species from central Ecuador is related to the frequent and variable Lepanthes monoptera . The habit is similar with dilated, ciliated margins of the ostia of the lepanthiform sheaths; narrow leaves; and short racemes. The upper lobes of the petals are similarly overlapping, except that the upper lobes of L. zelenkoi are cuneate, subtruncate, and larger than the lower lobes. The blades of the lip are glabrous, instead of ciliate. The appendix is minute and narrowly linear with the tip microscopically bilobulate." Luer & Hirtz 2009

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Selbyana 30: 15 Luer & Escobar 2009 Drawing fide;

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