Stelis somnolenta Luer & Hirtz 2013 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer

Common Name or Meaning The Sleepy Stelis [refers to the flowers with drooping dorsal sepal]

Flower Size .1" [2.5 mm]

Found in Ecuador without locational data as a miniature to small sized, caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls enveloped by a loose tubular sheath below the middle, and another below at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly obovate, subacute to obtuse, gradually narrowing below into the base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect, arising from a node at the apex of the ramicaul through a spathe, peduncle 2.8" [7 cm] long, 8.8" [22 cm] long overall, slender, strict, distichous, subdensely, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with much longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying flowers with bright yellow, minutely short pubescent sepals, purple petals and a purple suffused lip.

"This miniature to small sized, slender, caespitose species is related to Stelis calolemma Luer & Hirtz, but is distinguished by antrorse sepals that begin to expand beyond a short sepaline tube. Smaller flowers are bourne by very short peduncles hidden within proportionately large floral bracts, The lip is deeply concave below a deeply cleft bar. On the smooth, inner surface of the cavity a pair of thin, diverging lines descend from the cleft, giving the impression of a physical structure in two-dimensional photographs." 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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