Stelis gracilis Ames 1908 SUBGENUS Stellata SECTION Disticha eliator alliance Duque 2008No Photo

Common Name The Beautiful Stelis

Flower Size .15" [3 mm]

Found in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama in dense, wet tropical forests at elevations around 1050 meters as a mini-miniature sized, warm growing epiphyte with erect to ascending, slender ramicauls enveloped basally by 2 to 3, scarious sheaths and carrying a single apical, erect, subcoriaceous, oblanceolate, conduplicate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring and summer on a filiform, slender, 4.8" [12 cm] long, densely many flowered inflorescence

Synonyms Stelis panamensis Schltr.1918

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Orchids of Guatemala Ames, O. & D. S. Correll 1952; Encyclopedia of Cultivated Orchids Hawkes 1965; Icones Planetarum Tropicarum Plate 1279 Hamer 1984 drawing

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