Stelis brachiata Luer 2002 SECTION Humboldtia

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name or Meaning The Armed Stelis [refers to the antrorse arms of the stigmatic lobes]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect ramicauls enveloped patially by an elongate, inflated sheath and carrying an erect, linear-obovate, obtuse, narrowing below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on an erect, peduncle .98 to 1.2" [2 to 3 cm] long, 1.2 to 2" [3 to 5 cm] long overall, subdense, distichous, nearly simultaneous, several flowered inflorescence with infundibular, oblique acute longer than the overy floral bracts.

,Similar to Stelis odobenella but differs in the small habit with a simultaneously several flowered raceme of small, bilabiate flowers with broadly ovate sepals, thickly semilunate petals and a wedge shaped lip with a conical callus above the base with shorter curved, antrorse arms of the stigmatic lobes. S odobenella has much longer tusk-like stigmatic lobes, a larger plant with a successively 1 to 2, several flowered inflorescence.

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002

Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002 drawing fide;

Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 drawing fide

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