Lepanthes orchestris Luer & R.Vásquez 1983 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes Novon 1993 Photo by Wiel Driessen and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website

Common Name or Meaning The Dancer Lepanthes [refers to the dainty tailed flowers]

Flower Size .2" [5mm]

Found in northeastern Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia in cloud forests on the eastern slopes of the Andes at elevations aound 1300 to 2250 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool to cold growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 5 to 7, thin, pale, ciliate lepanthiform sheaths with dilated ostia and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, purple suffused below, ovate, subacute, rounded below and contracted into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring and fall on a dense, secund, .8 to 1.4" [2 to 3.5 cm] long including the .2 to .6" [5 to 15 mm] long peduncle, successively single, few flowered inflorescence arising on back of the leaf.

Similar to the Ecuadorian L ephalmatrix but this one differs in the larger habit, pendent, elliptical leaves [instead of erect, ovate] and twice as large flowers as L ephalmatrix.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Luer 1996 drawing fide; Orchids of Bolivia Vol 1 Vasquez and Ibisch 2000 drawing fide; Orchid Species of Peru Zelenko Bermudez 2009 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXXI Luer 2010 drawing fide; AOS Bulletin Vol 86 #2 2017 photo fide;

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