Lepanthes athena Luer 1996 SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by © Andreas Kay and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Photo by © Alexander Hirtz
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website
EARLIER 
Common Name The Dagger Winged Lepanthes [refers to the petals being like a butterfly]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in southern Colombia and northern-most Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1400 to 2400 meters as a miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with a slender to stout, erect ramicaul enveloped by 9 to 16, coarsely ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute to acuminate, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and fall on a filiform, congested, distichous, 1.8" [4.5 cm] long, successively many flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Luer 1996 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII 2012 drawing fide; Orchid Digest Vol 83 #3 2019 photo fide; Orchids A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019 drawing fide;
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