Peperomia litana
A small, hairless Ecuadorian peperomia with alternate, broadly elliptic leaves about 1.5 by 2.5 cm, known from very few collections and assessed as Critically Endangered. The name points to the Lita area on the Esmeraldas–Imbabura border, in the wet foothill forests of north-western Ecuador. Almost nothing is published about its ecology, so the care below is generalised from small foothill-forest peperomias.
Where it grows wild
Known from very few herbarium specimens. The type label reads 'Crescit in prov. Esmeraldas, ad fl. Lila' (river Lita), in the very wet premontane forest of the western Andean foothills; another Ecuadorian collection comes from a ridge near Borja on the eastern slope. Small peperomias here grow on mossy trunks, logs and banks in shade; its exact microhabitat is not recorded.
One Ecuadorian specimen is labelled 1,554 m (ridge near Borja); the Lita area lies at roughly 500–1,000 m. A Mexican specimen at 1,870 m in Oaxaca is almost certainly a misidentification.
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Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app.