Stelis megalops Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE 
EARLY
Common Name The Big Eye Stelis [refers to the large glenion]
Flower Size .16" [4 mm]
Found in Napo province of Ecuador at elevations around 1800 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath near the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly ellipitcal, acute to subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, congested, 2 to 2.8" [5 to 7 cm] long including the .4" [1 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously many flowered inflorescence arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul with oblique, infundibular, obtuse, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying dark red flowers with a silver hue within.
"Distinguished by slender ramicauls that are longer than the narrowly elliptical leaves and a crowded raceme of small, dark red flowers about as long as the leaf. The sepals are broaly ovate and obtuse and the trnasverse petals are thicjened in the margin witha transeverse callus. Most distinctive is the large, round glenion that occupies half the anterior surface of the lip. The lip is shallow witha sharply sloping base." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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