Stelis famelica Luer & R.Escobar 2017 SECTION Humboldtia
Photo by N Guttierez
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
Common Name The Hungry Stelis [refers to the flowers appearing to be open mouths of hungry baby birds]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Antioquia department of Colombia in wet montane forests at elevations around 2800 meters as a mini-miniature to just miniature sized, cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a loose, tubular sheath below the middle and another 1 to 2, below and at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, obtuse to rounded, cuneate below int to the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on an erect, arising through a slender spathe from below the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle 1.6 to 2" [4 to 5 cm] long, rachis 6.4 to 8.8" [16 to 22 cm] long, erect, strict, secund, congested, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, shorter to as long as the ovary floral bracts and carrying white flowers with glabrous sepals.
"The flowers this species are similar to those of Stelis lacertina , but vegetatively the plants differ markedly. The ramicauls are less than half as long with proportionately smaller, narrow leaves. The inflorescence consists of a longer, single, instead of multiple racemes, and the flowers are white, instead of green. The base of the dorsal sepal is not connate to the synsepal to form a retrorse mentum. The petals and lip are very similar." Luer 2017
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
*Harvard Pap. Bot. 22: 41 Luer & Escobar 2017;
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