Lepanthes portillae Luer 1999 SUBGENUS Marsipanthes SECTION Marisipanthes
Photo by © Lourens Grobler
Photo by Bruno Larsen and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Epidendra Orchid Website
Common Name Portilla's Lepanthes [Ecuadorian Nurseryman Current]
Flower Size .08" [2mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of southeastern Ecuador at elevations around 1800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender, ramicauls enveloped basally by 11 to 12, shortly ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths with dilated ostia and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, broadly elliptical, broadly obtuse to rounded apically, rounded below and contracted abruptly into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on a slender, beyond the leaf, to 2" [5 cm] long, loose, successively several flowered inflorescence with echinate, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and holding the flower in a pendant position.
"Similar to L ribes but differs in the markedly spiculate and fringed suborbicular sepaline cup. The lateral sepals are conspicuously inflated in their middle third along the lower rim of the cup with the apices acutely reflexed." Luer 1999
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XVIII Systematics of Pleurothallis subsection Antenniferae, Longiracemosae, Macrophyllae-Racemosae and Subgenera Pseudsostelis and Acuminata Luer 1999drawing fide; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 2 Dodson 2001 photo fide; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing fide
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