Cypripedium micranthum Franchet J. Bot. (Morot). 8: 265. 1894.

小花杓兰 xiao hua shao lan

Plants 8-10 cm tall, with a slender, creeping rhizome. Stem erect, 2-6 cm, glabrous, with 2 or 3 sheaths at base and a subopposite leaf and bract. Leaf and bract spreading horizontally or nearly prostrate on substrate; blade elliptic or obovate-elliptic, 7-9 × 3.5-6 cm, glabrous, apex mucronate. Inflorescence terminal, erect, with 1 flower, ebracteate; pedicel 2-5 cm, continuously elongating at fruiting, densely reddish villous; ovary 5-6 mm, densely reddish villous. Flower small, with blackish purple spots and short stripes on sepals and petals and red spots and stripes on lip and tinged with white around its mouth. Dorsal sepal ovate, 1.2-1.7 × 0.8-1 cm, concave, abaxially densely purple villous, apex acute or mucronate; synsepal elliptic, 1-1.3 × 0.8-0.9 cm, abaxially villous, apex shallowly 2-lobed. Petals ovate-elliptic, 1.3-1.4 × 0.5-0.8 cm, glabrous, apex acute; lip pouched, conspicuously dorsiventrally compressed, subellipsoid, ca. 1 cm, papillate on front surface. Staminode broadly orbicular or subsquare, ca. 3 mm, base slightly auriculate. Fl. May-Jun.

● Forests; 2000-2500 m. Chongqing, NW and SW Sichuan.