Stelis alternans Luer & Hirtz 2004 SUBGENUS Stelis Duque 2008 Photo by © S Manning and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

Inflorescence Photo by © Patricia Harding

Type Drawing Drawing by © Carl Luer and The Swiss Orchid Foundation at the Jany Renz Herbaria Website

Common Name The Alternating Stelis [refers to the flowers in the inflorescence]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Morona-Santiago Ecuador at elevations around 1300 meters as a miniature sized, warm growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath and 2 others at the abse and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly linear-elliptic, acute, narrowly cuneate below into the base leaf that blooms in the summer on an erect, congested, distichous, mostly simultaneous, several to many flowered, 4.4 to 4.8" [11 to 12 cm] long, closely spaced inflorescence arising through a slender spathe at the base of the leaf with oblique, obtuse floral bracts with alternating flowers all facing in the same direction

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 photo fide; *Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXVI Luer 2004 drawing fide

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