Scaphosepalum ophidion Luer 1981 SECTION Leiocaulium Luer 1988 Photo by © Ecuagenera and their Ecuadorian Orchid Website

Side View of Flower? Photo by Lourens Grobler

Plant and Flowers Photo courtesy of Patricia Harding

Common Name or Meaning The Little-Snake Scaphosepalum [refers to the bared fangs of the open flower]

Flower Size 2/5" [1 mm]

Found in Colombia and Ecuador at elevations of 1450 to 2500 meters as a miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with erect to suberect, very slender ramicaul enveloped by 2 to 3 tubular sheaths carrying a single, apical, erect, thinly coriaceous, elliptical, acute, acuminate leaf that is cuneate below into the slender petiole and blooms in the summer on a subdense, sharply flexuous slender, smooth, erect to lateral, 13 3/4" [12 cm] long, successively many flowered, racemose inflorescence. Differs from S. breve by having a thickened middle sepal with revolute margins and the tails ofthe lateral sepals are shorter than the blades..

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Systematics of the Pleurothallidinae Vol 1 Luer 1986; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Systematics of Dresslerella And Scaphosepalum Vol 5 1988 drawing fide;

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