Scaphosepalum ophidion Luer 1981 SECTION Leiocaulium Luer 1988

photo by © The Orchidees en Nord Website

Another Angle

Photo by © Ecuagenera and their Ecuadorian Orchid Website

Side View of Flower?

Photo by Lourens Grobler

Plant and Flowers

Photo courtesy of Patricia Harding

TYPE Drawing

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name or Meaning The Little-Snake Scaphosepalum [refers to the bared fangs of the open flower]

Flower Size 2/5" [1 mm]

Found in Cauca and Narino departments of Colombia and Pichincha and Carchi provinces of Ecuador at elevations of 1450 to 2500 meters as a miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with erect to suberect, very slender ramicaul enveloped by 2 to 3 tubular sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, elliptical, acute, acuminate leaf that is cuneate below into the slender petiole and blooms in the summer on a subdense, sharply flexuous slender, smooth, erect to lateral, 4.8" [12 cm] long, successively many flowered, racemose inflorescence.

Differs from S. breve by having a thickened middle sepal with revolute margins and the tails of the lateral sepals are shorter than the blades.

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol V Systematics of Dresslerella and Scaphosepalum Luer 1988 drawing fide; LANKESTERIANA 17(2): 305-310 Baquero 2017 photo fide

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