Stelis rotunda Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Stelis
TYPE Drawing Carl Luer
Common Name The Round Stelis [refers to the sepals and lip]
Flower Size .16" [4 mm]
Found in Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador at elevations around 1650 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a loose, tubular sheath below the middle and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical-oblong, round, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect, arising through a slender spathe, congested, distichous, to 1.6 to 2.6" [4 to 6.5 cm] long including the .4" [1 cm] long peduncle, successively few, many flowered inflorescence with tubular, inflated, obtuse, shorter to longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying flowers with expanded, glabrousexe\ternally, microscopically sparsely cellular within, transluscent white sepals and a rose colored central apparatus.
"Distinguished by the elliptical, petiolate leaves that are rounded at the apex and surpassed by a successively small flowered raceme. The widely expanded sepals are transluscent white and suborbicular. The petals are transverse with thickened margins. The lip is subspherical, slightly convex anteriorly with a broadly rounded apex. The transluscent flowers of S rotundata are similar to those of the purple flowered , but the latter is distinguished by slender ramicauls much longer than the acute, elliptical leaves." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVI Pleurothallis subgenus Acianthera A Second Century of Stelis of Ecuador Epibator, Ophidion Zootrophion Luer 2004 drawing fide; ;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------