Stelis elongatissima Luer & Hirtz 2002 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name or Meaning The Most Elongate Stelis [refers to the elongate inflorescence]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in Morona-Santiago province of Ecuador at elevations around 950 meters as a miniature sized, warm growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath and another at the base and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, narrowly linear-elliptic, acute, gradually narrowing below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on an erect, peduncle 7.2 to 8" [18 to 20 cm] long, arising through a .32" [8 mm] long, from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, rachis 6 to 9.2 " [15 to 23 cm] long, elongated, flexible, very distant, successively few, many flowered inflorescence with oblique, acute, almost as long as the ovary floral bract carrying flowers with expanded, purple, similar, fleshy, glabrous externally, microscopically cellular-glandular within sepals, purple, transversly ovate petals and a purple, thickly subquadrate lip.

"The species is characterized by the exceedingly long inflorescence with distantly spaced flowers. The leaves are narrowly linear-elliptic, twice to thrice longer than the ramicauls. The sepals are broadly ovate and similar, the petals are single veined and the lip is semi-orbicular with a glenion and is pubescent at the base." Luer 2002

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

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