Lepanthes purpurea Luer 1995 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer and Epidendra Orchid Website

Common Name The Purple Leafed Lepanthes [refers to the small plant]

Flower Size .8" [2 mm]

Found in Costa Rica in very wet forests at elevations of 100 to 1150 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing epiphyte, with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by 7 to 9, black, somewhat coarsely ciliate, lepanthiform sheaths with oblique ostia and carrying a single, erect, thinly coriaceous, purple, elliptic, acute, acuminate, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms on a slender, congested, distichous, .72" [18 mm] long, successively single, many flowered inflorescence arising on the back of the leaf with muricate floral bracts.

"Characterized by the purple, acuminate leaves borne by ramicauls clad in rather coarsely ciliate, black lepanthiform sheaths. A congested raceme is borne along the back. The sepals are greenish with the laterals connate into a broadly ovate, obtuse, shorly bifid and acuminate synsepal. The petals are bright yellow. The tiny, cinnabar red blades of the lip are borne by broad connectives froma broad body that is trotuberant beneath the column." Luer 1995

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; * Lindleyana 10: 164 Luer 1995 Drawing fide; Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003

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