Stelis pauxilla Luer & R.Escobar 2016 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name The Few Raceme Stelis [Refers to its few racemes]

Flower Size .16" [4 mm]

Found in Cauca department of Colombia at elevations around 3150 meters as a miniature to small sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and 1 to 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, coriaceous, oblong, obtuse, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on 1 to 2, erect, arising through a spathe from a node below the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle less than .4" [<1 cm] long, rachis .8 to 1.4" [2 to 3.5 cm] long, erect, congested, distichous, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with tubular, obtuse, as long as to shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying purple, glabrous flowers.

"Vegetatively, this species is similar to others with a fascicle of racemes shorter than an oblong, obtuse leaf. However, Stelis pauxilla is distinguished from them by thin, single-veined petals, and a type A lip concave below a bifid bar, and shortly pubescent on the basal half of the dorsum. Stelis pauxilla is similar to Stelis tenuilabris , but differs with a thick lip with a bifid bar, densely shortpubescent on the dorsum; and a column with large, exposed stigmatic lobes." Luer 2016

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Harvard Pap. Bot. 21: 80 Luer 2016 drawing fide

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