Stelis pinguis Luer & R.Escobar 2016 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name The Plump Stelis [refers to the leaves]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Antioquia department of Colombia at elevations around 2380 meters as a miniature to just small sized, cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, terete, stout ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath from below the middle and 1 to 2 others below and carrying a single, apical, erect, thickly coriaceous, linear, subacute to obtuse, sessile, narrowing below into the ramicaul leaf that blooms in the spring on 1 to 2, erect, arising through a spathe, from a node at the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle .4" [1 cm] long, rachis 3.2 to 6" [8 to 15 cm] long, congested, distichous, large bracted, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, conduplicate, acute, just longer to much longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying dull rose-brown flowers that almost do not get beyond the apex of the floral bracts.

"The very thick, linear leaves and the little suborbicular flowers nestled within large floral bracts are distinctive. The sepals are concave and pubescent within; the petals are membranous and three-veined; and the rounded lip is concave below a thin bar." Luer 2016

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Harvard Papers in Botany Vol 21 No 1: 84 Luer, Thoerle and Werner 2016 drawing fide;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------