Lepanthes ictalurus Luer 1983 SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Elongatae 1993
Photo by © Jay Pfahl
TYPE drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Ictalurus Lepanthes [Ictalurus, the genus with the common catfish, an allusion to the hairs on the petals being similar to the barbels of the catfish]
Flower Size .1" [3 mm]
Found in southern Colombia and northern Ecuador in cloud forests at elevations of 2000 to 3000 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with erect to sub-erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 5 to 15, long-ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, coriaceous, erect, elliptical to broadly elliptical to suborbicular, apex obtuse to rounded, becoming rounded and contracted into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on a flexuous, distichous, racemose, progressively lengthening, to [5.6"] 14 cm] long, successively flowered inflorescence.
"Easily determined by the long flexuous racemose inflorescence of yellow rimmed, red, prickly flowers with long acuminate lower lobes of the petals with abbreviated, obtuse, incurved upper lobes and the anterior lobes of the lip have long, slender processes, reminiscent of the barbels of a catfish." Carl Luer 1996
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Phytologia 54:346 1983, 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; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXII Luer 2012 drawing fide; Orchids A Colombian Treasure Vol 3 Ortiz & Uribe 2019;
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