Stelis vulcani Rchb.f. 1878 SECTION Humboldtia
Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuadorian Orchid Website
Photo by Duanne McDowell and his Flickr Orchid Photo Website
Photo by Ecuagenera and their Ecuadorian Orchid Website
Drawings by © Carl Luer
Common Name or Meaning The Volcano-Living Stelis
Flower Size .15" [3.2 mm]
Found in Venezuela, Colombia, Carchi, Sucumbios, Pichincha, Napo, Pastaza, Morona-Santiago, Cuñar, Azuay, Loja and Zamora-Chinchipe provinces of Ecuador and Huanuco department of Peru in cloud forests at elevations around 2800 meters as a small sized, cold growing epiphyte or occasional lithophyte with ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3 tubular sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, elliptic-oblong, coriaceous, subacute, tridenticulate apically, narrowing below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer through early winter on an erect, on 1 to 2, erect, arising through a spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, to 7.2" [18 cm] long including the 2 to 3.2" [5 to 8 cm] long peduncle, subdistichous, subdense, many flowered inflorescence with tubular, acute, just shorter to just longer than the ovary floral bracts and carrying glabrous flowers with white to yellow, to occasionally purple sepals, and a yellow to purple central apparatus.
"Characterized by the caespitose habit with narrow leaves surpassed by 1 to 2, slender, many flowered racemes of usually light yellow flowers but sometimes with purple petals and lip. The dorsal sepal with 3 to 5 veins, stands erect above the concave synsepal that sometimes splits above the middle, but the sepals remain connivent. Thep petals are transverse with a thickened edge. The lip is subquadraate with the bar fissured to the glenion. The callus on the dorsum isvariably and indistinctly lobed." Luer 2009
CAUTION I am not sure of either Duanne's or Ecuagenera's second species determinations so please use with caution!!.
Synonyms Stelis ecallosa Garay 1956
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
* Otia Botanica Hamburgensia Rchb.f 1878;
Flora de Venezuela Volumen 15 Parte 2 Foldats 1970 drawing ok;
Venezuelan Orchids Illustrated Vol 4 Dunsterville & Garay 1966 drawing ok;
Flora de Venezuela Volumen XV Parte 2 Foldats 1970 drawing good;
Orchids of Venezuela, An Illustrated Field Guide Vol 3 Dunsterville & Garay 1979 drawing ok;
Orchids of Venezuela [An illustrated field guide] Vol. 3 Ramiro and Carnevali 2000 drawing ok;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 photo not=S vulcanica;
Orquideas Nativas del Tachira Cesar Fernandez 2003 photo ok;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 photo not = S nanegalensis;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 as S ecallosa drawing good;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz A Compendium Duque 2008 drawing good;
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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