Cyclopogon

• Authority

  Ackerman, James D. 1995. An orchid flora of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 73: 1-203.

• Family

  Orchidaceae

• Scientific Name

  Cyclopogon

• Description

  Genus Description - Plants sympodial, terrestrial herbs. Roots fasciculate from a short rhizome, fleshy, villous. Leaves nonarticulate, basal, few to many, petiolate. Inflorescences terminal, erect; scapes bracteate; spikes or racemes many-flowered. Flowers resupinate, small, horizontal. Ovary sessile or subsessile. Sepals subparallel, free or fused at base and forming an obscure mentum with base of column or a conspicuous sepaline nectar tube. Petals connivent with dorsal sepal. Lip unguiculate, saggitate to cordate, lateral margins adpressed to sides of column. Column erect; stylar canal entrance central, stigma lobes 2, free to approximate; rostellum soft, longer than wide; pollinia 2, clavate-oblong with an apical constriction, mealy with a relatively large disc-shaped viscidium. Fruit a caspule.

• Discussion

  Cyclopogon C. Presl, Reliq. Haenk. 1: 93, t. 13. 1827. Type species. Cyclopogon ovalifolium C. Presl of the Andes of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. A neotropical genus of about 70 species. The generic name refers to either the pubescent sepaline bases of the type species (Schultes & Pease, 1963) or the tips of the sepaline tube, which resemble tails of fire with divided ends (Garay, 1980b). Representatives of this genus in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands sometimes have been referred to the segregate genus Beadlea because they lack a sepaline tube (Garay, 1980b). Balogh (1982) and Burns-Balogh and Robinson (1983) recognized Beadlea as a separate section of Cyclopogon because there is only one character difference to distinguish it. Calaway Dodson (pers. comm., 1988) discovered a plant in Ecuador with intermediate characteristics that effectively blur the generic or sectional distinctions. Special Literature. Garay, 1980b; Balogh, 1982; Burns-Balogh & Robinson, 1983.