Stelis samson Luer & R.Escobar 2016 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name Samson's Stelis [Samson, the biblical character of great strength, refers to the robust habit of the plant]

Flower Size .4" [1 cm]

Found in Santander department of Colombia at elevations around 2500 meters as a small to medium sized, cold growing, repent epiphyte with a stout rhizome giving rise to erect, rather stout ramicauls enveloped by atubular sheath below the middle and 1 to 2 others below and at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute, cuneate below into the base leaf that blooms in the later spring on a single, arising through a slender spathe from a node below the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle 2.4 to 4" [6 to 10 cm] long, rachis erect, loose, distichous, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with an oblique, acute, shorter than the ovary floral bract and carrying light yellow flowers.

"Vegetatively, this large, robust, repent species of the Eastern Cordillera is indistinguishable from Stelis hercules of the Central Cordillera, but it differs with glabrous, instead of longpubescent sepals, and a glabrous lip with a minute apiculum at the subacute tip." Luer & Escobar 2016

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Harvard Pap. Bot. 21[1]:85 Luer & Escobar 2016 drawing fide

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