Stelis aglochis Luer 2009 SECTION Stelis

Drawing by Carl Luer

EARLY

Common Name The Pointless Stelis [refers to an absent labellar apiculum]

Flower Size .24" [6 mm]

Found in Cotopaxi province of Ecuador at elevations around 1400 meters as a small sized, cool growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with slender, erect, fascicled ramicauls with a loose tubular sheath from below the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, erect, coriaceous, elliptical, subacute to obtuse, cuneate below into the slender, long-petiolate base leaf that blooms in the early winter on an apical, erect, lax, subflexuous, 6 to 6.8" [15 to 17 cm] long including the 1.2 to 2.4” [3 to 6 cm] long peduncle, many flowered inflorescence arising through a slender spathe from an annulus below the apex of the ramicaul and has infundibular, oblique, acute, as long as the pedicel floral bracts.

"Similar to Stelis argentata but differs in the larger habit with slender, fascicled ramicauls 1.6 to 2.4" [4 to 6 cm] long with much longer, wider, long-petiolate leaves up to 6.8" [17 cm] long and 1.2" [3 cm] wide. The ramicauls of S argentata are variable but usually less than 2.4" [6 cm] long and leaves less than 4" [10 cm] long. The flowers are similar but proportionally small for the large plant, the major difference being the entire margin of the type C lip, without the classical apiculum of S agentata." Luer 2009

Synonyms

References W3 Tropicos, Kew Monocot list , IPNI ;

* 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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