Stelis cajanumae Luer & Hirtz 2004 SECTION Humboldtia
Photo by © Alexander Hirtz
Photos by Ecuagenera and their Ecuador Orchid Website
TYPE Drawing by Carl Luer
LATER
Common Name The Cajanuma Stelis [A mountanous area of Southern Ecuador]
Flower Size .2" [5 mm]
Found in Zamora-Chinchipeand Loja provinces off southern Ecuador at elevations around 2750 to 3000 meters as a small sized, cold growing, densely caespitose epiphyte with erect, slender ramicauls enveloped by a tubular sheath near the middle and 2 to 3 others at the base and carrying a single, apical, erect, coriaceous, narrowly elliptical, subacute, cuneate below into the petiolate base leaf that blooms in the later summer on 1 to 2, erect, lax, distichous, 3.2 to 4.4" [8 to 11 cm] long, simultaneously several flowered inflorescence arising through a spathe with infundibular, oblique, acute, as long as the ovary floral bracts.
"Characterized by a slender, densely caespitose habit with ramicauls about as long a as the long-petiolate, elliptical leaves. Two racemes about as long as the leaf are produced. The dorsal sepal reflexes above the base and the synsepal is deeply concave with a deeply protruding cavity posteriorly. Within the petals are unusually thick. The bar of the lip protrudes on either side of a shallow central sulcus." Luer 2004
CAUTION I am not happy with this determination so please use with caution
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 as a comparison to S sparsiflora;
Native Ecuadorian Orchids Vol 5 Dodson 2004 photo ok
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