Lepanthes helleri A.D.Hawkes 1966 Photos by © Alfaro, Used under permission of Epidendra Website CR

Common Name Heller's Lepanthes [Nicaraguan Orchid Botanist 1900's]

Flower Size .08" [2mm]

Found in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama in premontane rain forest to cloud forest and disturbed primary forests at elevations of 1100 meters as a miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped completely by 4 to 7, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, orbicular, deeply concave and becoming latitudinally rolled with the margins almost touching and forming a tube, abruptly contracted below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms at any time on 1 to 3, mostly shorter than the leaf, 3/4" [2 cm] long, successively flowered inflorescence.

Said to be conspecific with L comet-halleyi, with L helleri taking precedence L comet-halleyi would be reduced to a synonym but as you can see they are quite different, so if the determinations are correct it looks like 2 different species.

Synonyms Lepanthes comet-halleyi Luer 1987

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Lankester's Epidendra Website CR CHECKED Type OK; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 818 Hamer/Dodson 1983 drawing fide; Australian Orchid Review Vol 69 No 5 2004 photo wrong;

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