Four new species of Lepanthes from the southwestern Andes of Colombia are described, illustrated and compared with morphologically similar species. The new species were found in San José del Salado, the Municipality of Dagua, Department of Valle del Cauca where several new species have been found and described in the past years.
Extensive fieldwork carried out on the Andean forests of Colombia resulted in the discovery of Lepanthes cordillerana, described here as a novel taxon. The new species is most similar to Lepanthes teres from Ecuador, from which it can be easily distinguished by the ciliated margins of the leaf, the oblong-acute lower lobe of the petals and the capitate, cuneate basally, apically caved, villose appendix. Despite its wide distribution across the three Colombian mountain ranges, a landscape analysis shows that 50% of the recorded wild populations of the endemic Lepanthes cordillerana are under threat of habitat loss and landscape fragmentation. Conservation efforts should be directed to reduce landscape scale threats to their populations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.