Scaphosepalum ophidion Luer 1981 SECTION Leiocaulium Luer 1988
photo by © The Orchidees en Nord Website
Photo by © Ecuagenera and their Ecuadorian Orchid Website
Photo by Lourens Grobler
Photo courtesy of Patricia Harding
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
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 Cauca and Narino departments of Colombia and Pichincha and Carchi provinces of Ecuador at elevations of 1450 to 2500 meters as a miniature sized, cool to cold 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, 4.8" [12 cm] long, successively many flowered, racemose inflorescence.
Differs from S. breve by having a thickened middle sepal with revolute margins and the tails of the lateral sepals are shorter than the blades.
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol V Systematics of Dresslerella and Scaphosepalum Luer 1988 drawing fide; LANKESTERIANA 17(2): 305-310 Baquero 2017 photo fide
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