Pleurothallis sphaerantha Luer 1975 SUBGENUS Pleurothallis SECTION Macrophyllae-Fasciculatae Lindl 1859
Photo by Alfonso Doucette Copyright © 2009, and His Flicker website
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE
Common Name or Meaning The Sphere-Shaped Pleurothallis [refers to the flower]
Flower Size .16" [4 mm]
Found in Pastaza and Morona-Santiago provinces of province of southeastern Ecuador in shady, wet tropical montane forests at elevations around 500 to 1100 meters as a miniature sized, warm growing, caespitose epiphyte with suberect, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 1 to 2 basal sheaths and another below the middle and carrying a single, apical, spreading, thickly coriaceous, rigid, ovate, deeply cordate and sessile base leaf that blooms in the late fall and winter on a reclining, enclosed by a spathe at the base of the leaf, a fascile of successively single flowered inflorescence and has athin, tubular, as long as the pedicel floral bract.
Characterized by the horizontal, rigid, cordate leaf with a small spherical flower with a suborbicular, concave dorsal sepal and synsepal with a large lip that fills the synsepal and is fitted within the concave apex.
Synonyms Acronia sphaerantha (Luer) Luer 2005; Zosterophyllanthos sphaeranthus (Luer) Szlach. & Kulak 2006
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Selbyana 1(3): 292, f. 81. Luer 1975 drawing fide;
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVII Systematics of Dryadella Systematics of Macrophyllae-Fasciculatae Luer 2005 as Acronia sphaerantha
Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVII Systematics of Dryadella Systematics of Macrophyllae-Fasciculatae Luer 2005 as Acronia sphaerantha drawing fide ;
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