Stelis translucens Luer & Hirtz 2007 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Carl Luer
EARLY 
Common Name The Transluscent Stelis [refers to the Flowers]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Morona-Santiago province Ecuador at elevations around 2800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with an erect, slender ramicaul enveloped by a tubular sheath below the middle and another at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute to obtuse, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early winter on an erect, arising through a narrow spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, subcongested, distichous, sublax, to 1.6 to 2.2" [4 to 5.5 cm] long including the .6 to .8" [1.5 to 2 cm] long peduncle, mostly simultaneously several flowered inflorescence with infundibular, acute, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying yellow flowers with glabrous but cellular, transluscent sepals.
" Characterized by ramicauls shorter than the elliptical leaves and a subdense, several flowered raceme with conspicuous, infundibular shaeths equaling to slightly esceeding the leaves. The sepals are yellow, broadly ovate, obtuse and deeply connate into sa slightly convex flower. When the flowers are closed, the petals, lip and column are visible the the transluscent sepals. The petals are transverse with a thickened margin and witha transverse callus. The lip ids transverse witha broadly rounded apex and a small, deep cavity is present in an otherwise shallw glenion." Luer 2007.
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIX A Third Century of Stelis of Ecuador Systematics of Apoda-Prorepentia Luer 2007 drawing fide;
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