Stelis acutula Luer & Hirtz 2002 SECTION Labiatae

TYPE drawing by Carl Luer

EARLY

Common Name The Small and Pointed Stelis [refers to the lip]

Flower Size .08" [2 mm]

Found in Morona Santiago, Pichincha and Loja provinces of Ecuador at elevations around 2500 to 2800 meters as a mini-miniature sized, cold growing, caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by 2 to 3 sheaths and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute, narrowly cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the summer and early fall on an erect, peduncle .8 to 1" [2 to 2.5 cm] long, from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul, rachis 1.2" [3 cm] long, secund, congested, mostly simultaneously many flowered inflorescence with infundibular, oblique, acute, shorter than the ovary floral bracts and carrying flowers with similar, yellow, glabrous sepals, the yellow , obovate-oblong, shallowly concave petals and a yellow subquadrate lip .

"The species is related to Stelis pusilla and is distinguished by the slender, congested raceme of superficially similar small flowers The sepals are povate, shallowly connate and directed forward. The petals are thin, obovate and single veined. The lip is subquadate, shallowly cleft anterioirly on the thick, bilobed bar and with an acute, deflected apiculum." Luer 2002

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002

Icones Pleurothallidinarum Vol XXIV A First Century of Stelis of Ecuador Luer 2002 Drawing fide

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