Stelis distans Luer & Hirtz 2002 SECTION Humboldtia

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name or Meaning The Distant Stelis [refers to the remotely flowered raceme]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 1500 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath and 1 to 2 others at the base and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptic, subacute to acute, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on an erect, peduncle 1.2" [3 cm] long, arising from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, rachis 1.2 to 2" [3 to 5 cm] long, lax, secund, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, almost as long as the ovary floral bract carrying red-purple flowers with glabrous sepals, transversly ovate petals and a thickly pyramidal lip.

"The species is characterized by the small, caespitose habit, narrow elliptic leaves somewhat longer than the ramicauls , and an erect, loosely several flowered, secund raceme. The dorsal sepal is broadly ovate, tha lateral sepals are smaller and semiconnate into a shallowly concave, bifid synsepal. The petals are transversly ovate, thickened on the rounded margin and thickened towards the middle. The lip is ovoid, shallowly concave with a rounded callus on the dorsum." Luer 2002

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

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

Icones Pleurothallidinarum XXIV A First Century of the Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002 Drawing fide

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