Restrepia mendozae Luer 1996 SUBGENUS Restrepia SECTION Pleurothallopsis Schltr. 1918

Photo by © Eric Hunt

TYPE Drawing

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name Mendoza's Restrepia [Ecuadorian discoverer of species current]

Flower Size .8" [2 cm]

Found in southeastern Ecuador in the Cordillera del Condor at elevations around 1500 meters as a small sized, coolgrowing epiphyte with erect ramicauls enveloped basally by 8 thin, loose, compressed, oblique, imbricating, distichous sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, acute, cuneate base contorted into the twisted petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on a slender, erect, successively single flowered, nutant inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf in a fascile and carrying a thin, tubular, shorter than the ovary floral bract.

"Similar to R flosculata but differs in the larger flowers with a proportionally large lip. The synsepal is yellow with a few red spots near the base and a red spot on either side of the lip below the middle. The petals are slender and expanded. The lip is oblong, barely if at all narrowed below the middle, only microscopically verurcose, and half the length of the synsepal." Luer 1996

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Orquideología 20(2): 157 Luer 1996 Drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol VIII Systematics of Restrepia Luer 1996 drawing/photo fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 4 Dodson 2003 drawing/photo fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 88 #3 2019 photo fide;

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