Stelis validipes Luer & R.Escobar 2017 SECTION Stelis

TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer

Common Name The Strong-Footed Stelis [refers to the thick rhizome]

Flower Size .2" [5 mm]

Found in Santander department of Colombia at elevations around 2800 meters as a small sized, cold growing, shortly ascending repent epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath above the middle and 1 to 2 others below and at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, acute to subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the spring on 2 to 3, simultaneous, arising from a node below the apex of the ramicaul, peduncle .8 to 1.6" [2 to 4 cm] long, rachis 4.4 to 6.8" [11 to 17cm] long, erect, strict, distichous, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with oblique, obtuse, as long as the ovary floral bracts and carrying glabrous flowers with yellow sepals and a purple central apparatus.

"This long-repent species is characterized by a rhizome that produces at intervals a short, erect ramicaul with an acute, elliptical leaf with a sublaxly flowered raceme. The sepals are elliptical-ovate with the lateral sepals connate into a synsepal. The apices of the thick petals and the apex of the lip are triangular and acute." Luer & Escobar 2017

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Harvard Pap. Bot. 22[1]: 60 Luer & Escobar 2017 drawing fide

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

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