Lepanthes janus Luer & R.Escobar 1985

Photo by © Carl Luer & Missouri Botanical Garden

Common Name The Janus Lepanthes [reffers to the roman god Janus, represented by rwo faces and refering to the 2 sympatric forms of the species]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Norte de Santander Colombia in cloud forests as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte at elevations around 2500 meters with slender ramcauls enveloped by 3 to 5 ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, obtuse, cuneate at the base into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on an erect, flexuous, flexible, 3.2" [8 cm] long, loose, successively few flowered, racemose inflorescence holding the flowers well above the leaf

There are 2 distinct flower forms of this species, one iluustrated here in the photo is the small sepaled one with the apice of the lip being as long as the bottom of the sepals and the large sepaled one where the apice of the lip is much shorter than the bottom of the sepals.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; *AOS Bulletin Vol 54 No 6 1985 photo fide; Native Colombian Orchids vol 5 1994 COS photo as L cymbium fide

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------