Lepanthes parvula Dressler 1959 SUBGENUS Lepanthes SECTION Lepanthes SUBSECTION Lepanthes SERIES Lepanthes

Photo by © Gerardo Salazar

Common Name The Small Flowered Lepanthes

Flower Size .04” [1 mm]

Found in southern Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador on small mossy trees at elevations around 950 to 1650 meters as super-mini-miniature sized, warm to cool growing epiphyte with ascending, erect ramicauls enveloped by 3 to 5 lepanthiform sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, fleshy, intense green above, spotted or totally purple on the back, elliptic-orbicular to ovate, obtuse, apically tridentate, attenuate below into the shortly petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on up to 3, 1/3 as long as the leaf, on top of the leaf, peduncle .08 to .2” [2 to 5 mm] long, thin, purple, rachis subdistichous, congested, successively single, to 5 flowered inflorescence with obliquely infundibuliform, cucullate, lepanthiform floral bracts.

This is the smallest Lepanthes in Mexico

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI Las Orquideas de El Salvador Hamer vol 3 1981 as L ancyclopetala in error drawing fide; El Genero Lepanthes Sw. En Mexico Salazar and Soto 1996 Photo/drawing fide; Lepanthes de Guatemala Archila 2001 drawing fide; Orchid Genera and Species in Guatemala Archila, Szlachchetko, Chiron, Lipinska, Mystkowska and Bertolini 2018

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