Stelis microsynema Luer & Hirtz 2013 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

LATE EARLY

Common Name or Meaning The Slender Habit Stelis

Flower Size .1" [2.5 mm]

Found in Sucumbios province of Ecuador at elevations around 1900 meters as a miniature sized, cool growing, ascending repent epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by a thin tubular sheath below the middle, and another below at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptic, acute, narrowing below into the ill-defined, subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, arising from near the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle 1.2 to 1.6" [3 to 4 cm] long, 2 to 2.2" [5 to 5.5 cm] long overall, strict, subcongested, distichous, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with as long as the ovary floral bracts and carrying flowers light yellow, glabrous sepals, light yellow with purple tip, membraneous petals and a light yellow with purple apex lip.

"This homely, small, densely caespitose species of SECTION Stelis is distinguished by narrowly elliptical leaves that are surpassed by a many flowered, distichous raceme of minute, yellow flowers. The broadly ovate sepals are covered within by a short, papillose pubescence; the petals are single-veined; and the type A lip is obtuse with a faint outline of a proportionately large glenion below the bar. This species is related to S. scansor Rchb.f., differing in the caespitose rather than long-repent habit, and an inflorescence about twice the length of the leaves, rather than subequal in length." Luer 2013

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Harvard Papers in Botany, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 173 to 196 MISCELLANEOUS NEW SPECIES IN THE PLEUROTHALLIDINAE (ORCHIDACEAE) Carlyle A. Luer & Lisa Thoerle 2013 drawing fide;

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