Stelis aequoris Luer & Hirtz 2009 SECTION Humboldtia

Drawing by Carl Luer

EARLY

Common Name The Flat Stelis [refers to the gaping flower

Flower Size .24" [6 mm]

Found in Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador at elevations around 2500 meters as a miniature sized, cold growing epiphyte with slender, erect ramicauls with a tubular sheath enveloping the middle third and 1 to 2 others at the base and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, narrowly ovate, acute, cuneate below into the slender, petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early summer on an apical, erect, loose, 5.2 to 5.6" [13 to 14 cm] long including the .8 to 1.6” [2 to 4 cm] long peduncle, successively several, many flowered inflorescence arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul and has oblique, infundibular, acute, as long as to shorter than the ovary floral bracts.

Differs from others in the section Humboltia with the small habit, and acute, narrowly ovate, long petiolate leaf and a loose many flwoered raceme of medium sized yellow flowers.The synsepal spreads 180 degrees from the dorsal sepal to create a more or less flat flower. The synsepal is concave only centrally. The eptals are deeply concave below the transverse callus and only barely concave above that below the broadly rounded margin." Luer 2009

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Stelis of Ecuador Part IV Luer 2009

Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXX Lepanthes of Jamaica Stelis of Ecuador Part IV Luer 2009 drawing fide;

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