Stelis rubens Schltr. 1910Photo by © Dr Rodolfo Solano Gomez

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Common Name The Reddish Stelis

Flower Size .15" [2.5 mm]

Found in Jalisco, Oaxaca, Vera Cruz and Chiapas states of Mexico in tropical rainforests at elevations of 350 to 1100 meters as a small sized, hot to warm growing epiphyte with short, terete ramicauls completely enveloped by 2 tubular, glabrous, oblique, obtuse, slightly prominent veined, sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, narrowly linear-oblanceolate, round, bilobed, small mucronate iun the middle of the apex, fleshy-coriaceous, attenuate to the channeled petiolate base leaf that blooms in the dpring through late fall on a terminal, erect, racemose, thin, to 8" [20 cm] long, to 70 flowered inflorescence carrying 2 rows of simultaneously opening flowers 180 degrees apart.

This species has color variable flowers from pale green to greenish white to suffused with reddish-purple

Synonyms Apatostelis rubens (Schltr.) Garay 1979; Stelis liebmannii Rchb.f. ex Hemsl. 1934; Stelis tuerckheimii Schltr. 1910

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ; Encyclopedia of Cultivated Orchids Hawkes 1965; Icones Orchidacearum I Plate 98 Hagsater & Salazar 1990 drawing fide;

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