Stelis ottonis Schltr. 1929 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Carl Luer and Selbyana 32(1,2): 79 Luer & Vasquez 2018
Common Name Otto's Stelis [Named for the collector, Otto Buchtien 1900's]
Flower Size .24" [6 mm]
Found in La Paz department of Bolivia at elevations around 1400 meters as a small sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls with a tubular sheath from below the middle and 2 others below and at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, thickly coriaceous, elliptcal, obtuse to rounded, cuneate below into the sessile to subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer on 1 to 2, erect, arising through a spathe from a node below the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle 2 to 3.2" [5 to 8 cm] long, rachis 2 to 8.8" [5 to 22 cm] long, erect, congested, distichous, simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with close, tubular, obtuse, as long as the pedicel floral bracts and carrying glabrous flowers with purple, purplish brown to greenish suffused with purple, semilunate ouroke petals and a purple lip.
" This species is very similar to the large-leaved S. phaeomelana, with which it is easily and often confused, from which S. ottonis is distinguished by leaves not abruptly petiolate and glabrous sepals with the dorsal sepal 5-veined, although incompletely. Stelis ottonis is a strong, large species with broad, thick, subsessile leaves that are exceeded by one or two simultaneously many-flowered racemes of small, purplish flowers. The sepals are expanded, glabrous and subacute, the dorsal vein 5-veined; and the petals are three-veined. The lips of both species is type A, that is, shallowly concave below the bar with a glenion, and with a low, broad callus on the dorsum." Luer & Vasquez 2018
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
*Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 27: 45 Schlechter 1929;
Selbyana 32(1,2): 79 Luer & Vasquez 2018;
Selbyana 32(1,2): 149 Luer & Vasquez 2018 Drawing fide;
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