Stelis mandoniana Schltr. 1929 SECTION Stelis
Drawing by © Carl Luer
LATE 
EARLY
Common Name Mandon's Stelis [Named for Gilbert Mandon, French Botanist who worked extensively in Bolivia 1799 - 1866]
Flower Size .12" [3 mm]
Found in La Paz department of Bolivia at elevations around 1400 meters as a miniature to small sized, cool growing, shortly repent epiphyte with erect, slender, fasciculate ramicauls enveloped by a close tubular sheath on the middle third and another 1 to 2 at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, obtuse to subacute, narrowing below into the subpetiolate base leaf that blooms in the late summer and early fall on an erect, about twice longer than the leaf, secund, sublax, many flowered inflorescence with thin erect, elliptic-lanceolate, acuminate floral bracts and carrying dark purple flowers.
"Stelis mandoniana Schltr. is large with a long, multiflowered raceme with slender floral bracts and very small flowers. Schlechter states that the dry flower is three millimeters wide, which could mean that the sepals are only one and a half millimeter wide, but possibly not, because the column is described as being two millimeters long, but those two millimeters may include the pedicel. The sepals and petals are three-veined; the lip, apparently with a cleft bar is described as being almost as long as the sepals. Garay (1980) reduced Stelis mandoniana to synonymy of S. purpurascens A.Rich. & Gal., but the floral bracts of S. purpurascens are not large, and the sepals are glabrous with the dorsal sepal five-veined. The illustration provided herewith was made from Schlechter's published information." Luer & Vasquez 2018
Synonyms
References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;
*Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 27: 42 Schlechter 1929;
Selbyana 32(1,2): 65 Luer & Vasquez 2018
Selbyana 32(1,2): 146 Luer & Vasquez 2018 Drawing fide;
Orchidaceae Stelis Swartz Duque 2008
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