IOSPE PHOTOS

Lepanthes psomion Luer & Hirtz 1996 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Breves SERIES Breves Luer 1993 Photo by © Jean Marc Pallandre and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website

EARLY

Common Name The Tiny Bit Lepanthes [refers to the small flowers]

Flower Size .8" [2 mm]

Found in northwestern Ecuador in wet forests at elevations around 750 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte, with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 7 to 10, close fitting lepanthiform sheaths with microscopically ciliate ostia and carrying a single, erect, thinly coriaceous, linearly suffused with purple beneath, narrowly ovate, acuminate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the winter and early spring on a filiform, very congested, distichous, .88" [22 mm] long, successively single, many flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf with spiculate floral bracts.

CAUTION!! I am sure that this determination is incorrect. This cannot be L psomion in the series breves because of the reticulated, ovate suborbicular leaves [L psomion has narrowly ovate, acute to acuminate leaves, this one has suborbicular leaves, also Luer makes no mention of the reticulation which is quite obvious] , as well as the lip which differs greatly from Luer's drawing of L psomion. I cannot see the lateral sepals to see if they are 1 veined which would keep it in the series breves, but if it has 2 veins in the lateral sepals then it seems closer to something in the series lepanthes near L calodictyon

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XIV Luer 1996 Drawing not; Flora of Ecuador No 88 Lepanthes and affiliates Dodson & Luer 2011 drawing not

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