Lepanthes gemmula Luer & Hirtz 1992 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes
Photo by Ecuagenera Orchid Webpage
TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Little Gem Lepanthes
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in Morona Santiago province of Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations around 1500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by about 3 to 6, ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, broadly elliptical-ovate, obtuse, rounded and contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on a slender, sublax, distichous, to .44" [1.1 cm] long, successively several flowered inflorescence arising behind the leaf.
"Distinguished by the small habit with broadly ovate leaves and a colorful flower about as long as the leaves. The acuminate sepals are denticulate, the blades of the lip are broadly obovate and the short appendix is terminated by a broadly bilobed, ciliate apex." Luer 1996
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Systematics of Draconanthes, Lepanthes subgenus Marsipanthes and subgenus Lepanthes of Ecuador Luer 1996 drawing fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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