Stelis alfredii Schltr. 1923 SECTION Stelis

ISOTYPE Drawing by Schlechter

LATER

Common Name Alfred's Stelis [Alfredo Sancho Costa Rican Botanist 1900's]

Flower Size .12" [3 mm]

Found in Costa Rica in very wet, pluvial and cloud forests at elevations of 1650 to 2000 meters as a small to medium sized, cool growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect ramicauls carrying a single, apical, narrowly elliptic, petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later summer on an erect, arising through a spathe, peduncle 1.2 to 2.4" [3 to 6 cm] long, congested, distichous, 4 to 8.8" [10 to 22 cm] long, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with as long to longer than the pedicel floral bracts and carrying flowers with the tepals dark purple and the lip purple.

"Characterized by the narrowly elliptic leaf slightly longer than the thin ramicaul, and far surpassed by the congested, distichous, thin raceme. The small flowers with ovte, obtuse and cellular pubescent on the inside. In habit it is the same as S thecoglossa but it has a thin lip with the anterior surface wide and profoundly concave without a glenion. S alfredii has a thicker lip, similar to S aemula with the anterior surface concave with a shiny glenion." Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

*Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. Beih. 19: 170 Schlechter 1923;

Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica Vol 3 Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora 2003;

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