Stelis cavernosa Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Stelis
TYPE Drawing by © Carl Luer
Common Name The Cavernous Stelis [refers to the lip]
Flower Size .24” [6 mm]
Found in Zamora Chinchipe and Morona-Santiago provinces of Ecuador at elevations around 1650 to 2250 meters as a small sized, cool to cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, stout ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath above the middle and 2 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical-ovate, obtuse, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the fall on an erect, strict, congested, distichous, 7.2 to 8.8” [18 to 22 cm] long including the 1.6 to 2” [4 to 5 cm] long peduncle, simultaneously several, many flowered inflorescence arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul with conspiculous, acute, oblique, as long to longer than the ovary floral bracts.
"Closely allied to S lindenioibut distingusihed by the large floral bracts that begin near the base and by the lip. The glenion is deep and large, occupying much of the anterior surfav ce of the bar and he dorsum of the lip slpes downward without a significant callus." Luer 2004
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
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