Lepanthes nycteris

Lepanthes nycteris is from Bolivia and Peru and belongs to a group of orchids whose flowers are mostly small but very unusual, very complex and often very colorful.  A previous blog post shows a large number of these flowers (see below).  In this case the rather strange flowers are named after a family of bats, the Slit-faced Bats, or Nycteridae.

The plant is 6-7 cm and the flowers a little over 2 cm tall.  The plant has oval leaves on thin, wiry stems and the flowers come in succession on thin dangling spikes.  For this reason the plant is better grown mounted, and mine is on a thin piece of cork bark.  Since it comes from high altitude cloud forest, it should be grown cool and moist and prefers quite low light.

For more information on the genus Lepanthes see this post:
http://orchidsinbloom-ron.blogspot.com/2011/08/lepanthes-jewels-of-orchid-world.html